Wernher von Braun and John Kennedy, 1962

Messages about the imminent visit to Earth of representatives of alien civilizations, naturally, cause the most conflicting emotions in people. From the unbridled belief that this will indeed happen soon, to the complete denial of the possibility of such a development of events.

On the other hand, representatives of traditional science have repeatedly expressed themselves in the vein that, they say, it would be foolish to assume that earthly civilization is the only one of its kind even in our galaxy. And this inevitably leads to the conclusion that the contact of earthlings and aliens is not such a fantastic assumption.

This kind of reasoning gave rise to a completely predictable consequence. Numerous researchers have been searching for more than a decade in the direction that there have been contacts with aliens before, and moreover, more than once, that the governments of most countries of the world have absolutely clear information about this, but prefer to hide it from their citizens for a number of reasons. And, moreover, there are suspicions that they can and will definitely play the “alien card” in their own interests, which are very far from the interests of ordinary inhabitants.

From this point of view, the revelations of Wernher von Braun, which became known to the general public only in 2001, almost 25 years after his death in 1977, are extremely important.

Recall that Wernher Magnus Maximilian von Braun (Wernher Magnus Maximilian von Braun), who was born on March 23, 1912 in the Prussian city of Wirsitz (now a small Polish town) and died on June 16, 1977 in the city of Alexandria (Virginia, USA), is considered one one of the founders of modern rocket science, the creator of the first ever ballistic missiles. In the United States, he is referred to only as the "father" of the American space program.

Von Braun and his role in the US lunar program will be discussed in more detail later. In the meantime, let us recall that von Braun, who was taken out of Germany to the USA in May 1945 with his colleagues at the Peenemünde rocket center, among other things, was exactly the person who launched the first American artificial Earth satellite into Earth orbit on January 31, 1958, partially thereby reducing the backlog of the United States from the USSR in the exploration of outer space.

Shortly after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was established on July 29, 1958, Wernher von Braun (since 1960) became a member of NASA and director of the NASA Space Flight Center. It was von Braun who was the direct head of the development of the Saturn series launch vehicles and the Apollo series spacecraft, which were destined to play an important role in the landing of American astronauts on the surface of the moon.

On May 26, 1972, von Braun retired from NASA. The official version of his departure is that his views and the views of the NASA leadership on the further development of the US space programs (including the further exploration of the Moon) turned out to be almost diametrically opposed. When von Braun three years earlier was developing a mission to Mars, planning to implement it as early as the 1980s, NASA management began to cut funding for the Apollo program. And the population of the United States, which in the first half of the 1950s provided tremendous support to von Braun, was not particularly enthusiastic about the implementation of further space programs: after all, the Americans had already visited the moon, what else, it would seem, could be desired?

On July 1, 1972, Wernher von Braun took over as Vice President for Engineering and Development of Fairchild Industries, an aerospace company headquartered in Germantown, Maryland. . Von Braun worked at Fairchild Industries for four and a half years: on December 31, 1976, he was forced to leave his job for health reasons and died six months later.

And now - a small digression.

In 2009, the Eksmo publishing house published the works of the American researcher Joseph P. Farrell translated into Russian, which were published in the United States in the first half of the 2000s. The first of these books was called Giza Death Star. The Paleophysics of the Great Pyramid and the Military Complex at Giza. Adventures Unlimited Press, Kempton, Illinois, 2002. Farrell's second book was titled The Giza Death Star Deployed. The Physics and Engineering of the Great Pyramid. Adventures Unlimited Press, Kempton, Illinois, 2003.

Farrell, from an alternative point of view, considers the purpose of the ancient pyramids near the city of Giza, located in upper Egypt on the left bank of the Nile. This complex includes the pyramids-tombs of the pharaohs Cheops, Khafre, Mykerin, next to which is the famous Great Sphinx.

So, Joseph Farrell believes that the Egyptian pyramids were part of a grandiose military complex for the creation of beam weapons of colossal destructive power. Moreover, the military complex on the Giza plateau was already used in antiquity, which led to disastrous consequences for the solar system. In these three works, Farrell writes that the principles of paleophysics were used in the construction of the Giza war machine. These principles make it possible even today to create an extremely powerful weapon that is capable of destroying an entire planet. Farrell believes that experimental models of such weapons have already been created and tested in combat conditions at the end of the 20th century. In general, everyone who is interested in this issue is highly recommended to read Farrell's research.

We are interested in the next moment.

In The Giza War Machine (Part 2, Chapter IV, subchapter "Richard Hoagland"), Farrell refers to the book by an American, Dr. Steven Greer, "Disclosure: Military and Government Evidence Revealing the Greatest Mysteries of Modern History" ("Disclosure : Military and Government Witnesses Reveal the Greatest Secrets in Modern History"), which was released in the United States in early 2001.

This 560-page work is a collection of affidavits and stories from people who have observed UFOs or been involved in various secret projects. One such witness was Dr. Carol Sue Rosin, who worked with Wernher von Braun from 1974-1977 at Fairchild Industries.

About her communication with von Braun, Carol Rosin, in particular, said: “The most interesting idea for me was the idea that von Braun constantly emphasized throughout the four years during which I had a chance to work with him. He talked about the strategy that was used to manipulate society and those who make decisions - this is a method of intimidation, creating the image of an enemy.

According to this strategy, Wernher von Braun urged me, the Russians should be considered the main enemy.

The next were called terrorists, which was soon confirmed. [He] said that there would be a third enemy against which we would create a weapon stationed in space.

That enemy is asteroids. He chuckled when he first mentioned it. It is to protect against asteroids that we will build space-based weapons.

And the funniest of all were those whom he called aliens. This is the last of the dangers. In the four years that we've known each other, he's been pulling that last card all the time. “And remember, Carol, the last card is aliens. We're going to build a space-based weapon against aliens, and it's all a lie."

The last card is hostile alien creatures. The insistence with which he repeated this led me to the conclusion that he knew something about which he was afraid to speak. He was afraid to talk about it. He didn't give me any details. I'm not sure that in 1974 I would have understood these details or even believed him."

Steven Greer's "Exposure" and Carol Rosin's Testimony

Steven Greer's "Reveal" project is a very large-scale event, well known in the US and many countries around the world.

On May 9, 2001, the US National Press Center in Washington DC hosted a unique action in many ways. On this day, more than 20 representatives of the US armed forces, intelligence agencies, representatives of business structures , which presented evidence not only of the existence of extraterrestrial life forms, but also of their repeated visits to Earth. The press conference participants also talked about the ongoing development of alternative energy sources and engines operating on completely different principles.

Steven Greer himself is a doctor of medicine, a member of one of the most prestigious medical associations in the United States - Alpha Omega Alpha. For many years he worked in his specialty. In 1992, he acted as the founders of the "Exposure" project.

Stephen Greer...

...and his famous book "Revealing"

It is also part of the international community that is exploring the possibility of obtaining energy from alternative sources (in particular, “zero point” energy), which would allow, in principle, to abandon the use of Earth's minerals for energy generation.

A former colleague of Wernher von Braun - Carol Rosin - also took part in this press conference. She was born on March 29, 1944. Rosin met von Braun in early 1974, and became the first woman to hold the position of corporate manager at Fairchild Industries.

Former colleague of Wernher von Braun - Carol Rosin

After the death of von Braun, Rosin fought for many years to ensure that, first at the level of the US government (and then the entire world community), a legislative ban was introduced on the deployment of any weapon systems in outer space. In 1983, Carol Rosin founded the non-profit organization Institute for Security and Cooperation in Outer Space (ISCOS), which she still leads as president. It is noteworthy that the leaders of this organization at one time included science fiction writers Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and astronaut Edgar Mitchell.

Together with her like-minded people, Carol Rosin has prepared a bill prohibiting the use of outer space for military purposes. And on December 8, 2003, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Dennis Kucinich; born 10/08/1946) submitted it to the US Congress.

By the way, during the US presidential election campaign in 2003-2004, Kucinich ran for the US Democratic Party (he lost the primaries to John Kerry). Kucinich made his second attempt in the 2007-2008 election campaign: he was supported by a wide variety of activist circles, including the owner and publisher of Hustler magazine, Larry Flint. But in the end, during the primaries, Barack Obama was nominated for the post of President of the United States from the Democratic Party.

In 2004, Carol Rosin was interviewed by well-known US investigative journalist Linda Moulton Howe, some of the most interesting fragments of which are given below.

What exactly did Wernher von Braun tell you about the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations?

He repeatedly repeated the idea that only in our galaxy there are about a hundred billion stars. And to think that there is intelligent life only on Earth is at least naive. Speaking of aliens, of "strangers", he often turned into arguments about what he called the "formula of war." It must be remembered that when I started working at Fairchild Industries, the US and the USSR were in a state of "cold war".

Von Braun said this: “Let's start with what you see every day. And you see a continuous series of military conflicts and more and more new enemies who are appointed to this role so that wars constantly continue. The purpose of these wars, ultimately, is aimed at establishing dominance in outer space, for which it is imperative to control the minds of people. Therefore, they, our government structures, will never tell people the truth about who we are and who surrounds us in the Universe.”

It was for this, said Dr. Brown, including the constant pumping of the budget of the Pentagon, that the "list of enemies" was compiled, designed to maintain the regime of war in the world. The list, as Dr. Brown told me back in 1974, is: the Soviet Union, international terrorism, asteroids, aliens.

Wernher von Braun in the last years of his life: February 1970 photo

And how did von Braun explain the choice of these enemies?

Recalling the time when he began working in the US military-industrial complex, von Braun noticed that there were indeed fears about the Soviet threat at that time. But the Russians, as such, have never been enemies for the United States - they have been made such.

Terrorists - immigrants from the countries of the "third world", asteroids - when I talked with von Braun, no one even heard about these threats (unlike today). I asked Dr. Brown: what does the asteroids have to do with it? To which he replied that, of course, it was not about asteroids. The main task is to bring military technologies into outer space. To do this, the manipulation of public consciousness will definitely be used, a lot of arguments will certainly be given in favor of the fact that weapons must be deployed in space to protect our national interests.

Dr. Brown kept repeating that the last card to be played in this performance would definitely be hostile aliens. Von Braun constantly repeated: “None of the representatives of alien civilizations is hostile to earthlings. All talk of threats from them is a lie!”

Is it possible to understand the words of von Braun in the sense that the US government circles, together with the leadership of Russia, can play a show about hostile aliens in order to keep the flow of budgetary funds allocated for military purposes?

No, von Braun never said that the Russians were part of this process. He believed that the center of decision-making is in the United States. It was von Braun who gave me, so to speak, the task to do everything possible to ensure that a ban on the placement of weapons of mass destruction in outer space was imposed at the legislative level.

It may seem strange to some that von Braun entrusted such a large and responsible task to me. But von Braun himself noted more than once that when he and his colleagues were transferred to the United States as part of the Paperclip program in 1945, an incredible amount of rumors spread about them then and later: that they continue to be ardent Nazis, that they , in fact, criminals and so on. All this was an absolute lie.

I'll tell you more. Even among peace and disarmament activists, I have met people who were sincerely convinced that it was von Braun and his colleagues who initiated the Star Wars program, which began to be implemented from the early 1980s, under Ronald Reagan. Which, of course, was by no means true.

Von Braun and his colleagues, having arrived in the United States, really wanted to engage in rocket and space research. But it so happened that the existing system of the US military-industrial complex absorbed, drew them into itself. This system is extremely interested in maintaining mossy, outdated ideas about the world around us and makes great efforts to keep people within the framework, so to speak, of the "earthly paradigm".

But von Braun and his colleagues looked far ahead. Without much exaggeration, we can say that they were true representatives of the space age.

Thus, the following picture emerges: Wernher von Braun was extremely concerned about the fact that the US leadership is hiding from its citizens the truth about the existence of alien civilizations. And, moreover, it seeks to use the thesis of hostile aliens in order to increase the budgets of military structures. So?

It's not just the Pentagon. This process involves enterprises and research centers operating within the aerospace industry, laboratories, universities and institutes. In a word, everyone who has a job keeping this secret. Moreover, most people working in these sectors of the economy and science are not even aware of the existence of this secret.

On the other hand, people can be understood purely humanly: everyone needs a job, everyone needs to support their families, feed their children, pay for their education. What will a person facing a dilemma choose: to remain silent or to tell the truth publicly, while losing money, sacrificing a career, position in society?

Well, OK. And why, in this case, do representatives of other states, say, China, not tell the truth about alien intelligence?

You know, for many years I myself could not understand how all this is interconnected. It can be said that I was looking for the truth alone, on my own. While working at Fairchild Industries, I was a highly paid manager who was hired under the patronage of Wernher von Braun. But von Braun himself perceived me, first of all, as a person whose thoughts and actions are determined by his basic education. After all, I am a school teacher.

As for China, I can say this. I have been to China many times, and I feel that there are many people there who know the secret. But the fact is that the Chinese will never be the initiators of any global processes. Yes, they are not indifferent to the truth, but they believe that representatives of other countries should be the first to tell the truth about alien civilizations. Well, for example, the same United States.

And what might that look like in practice? Will some kind of global press conference be organized in the USA, at which officials will openly declare that we are not alone in the Universe, and introduce representatives of extraterrestrial intelligence to shocked journalists?

It may seem ridiculous, but I heard about these words a few years ago when I spoke with a scientist at one of the Chinese universities. They just expect such a scenario. I then asked my Chinese interlocutor why, knowing the truth, they do not make it public?

He answered me in the vein that, they say, we, the Chinese, are subjects of the Celestial Empire. We are not in a hurry. We prefer to wait. And we will never show aggression even if, say, the United States declares our country as one of its potential enemies.

Again, going back to my conversations with Wernher von Braun, I want to reiterate how great his fears were about placing weapons of mass destruction in Earth orbit. He repeatedly repeated that none of those who were declared "enemies of America" ​​were actually such.

Carol, why did you start speaking publicly about your conversations with Dr. von Braun so many years later?

For many years I was silent, fearing ridicule. It was not easy to remain silent, because the words of Dr. Brown literally haunted me for many years. And when, already in the early 2000s, I began to learn that representatives of the intelligence communities and special services, representatives of the army, the military-industrial complex and science, began to speak openly on these topics, I decided that now I can no longer be silent.

In that case, why don't representatives of alien intelligence make attempts to prohibit the US (or any other country) from militarizing outer space? Do they not intervene because it is dangerous for them?

Not at all. They will never interfere in our purely earthly affairs. But as soon as an attempt is made to place weapons in space or, say, throw toxic waste into outer space, they will not allow it.

I cannot provide direct evidence, but I have information that they once blocked an attempt to place weapons of mass destruction in space.

It must be understood that earthly weapons have not yet been deployed in space. But there is no guarantee that it will not appear there tomorrow. Judge for yourself. The draft law on the peaceful use of outer space developed by me and my like-minded people, submitted to Congress by Dennis Kucinich (draft draft number H. R. 3615), has not only not been adopted yet, but has not even been submitted for discussion.

I believe that the current composition of the US Congress and the current administration of the White House will not impose a ban on the deployment of weapons in space. I hope that the new President of the United States, the new people in the United States Congress will make this important decision. It would be nice if a similar ban were adopted at the international level - this, of course, could push the US leadership to take a step forward.

But if that doesn't happen, Carol? What do you think the worst-case scenario might look like?

I believe that this will be the complete annihilation of mankind. And this is a very real danger. Moreover, this serious danger comes not only from the possibility of deploying weapons of mass destruction in space, but also from natural disasters, man-made disasters that can occur at any moment.

China recently announced that it is going to launch its program of exploration and exploration of the moon. It is known that the US leadership is very concerned about the fact that China is an ever-growing economic and political power on Earth. Will it not turn out that in 5-6 years conflicts can take place not only on Earth, but also on the Moon?

Of course, if current trends continue, territorial conflicts on the Moon are a very possible reality. That is why the non-proliferation of weapons in outer space is one of the most important tasks. True, the Chinese leadership has already stated that outer space should not be militarized. And it has been repeated over and over for decades. The leadership of Russia spoke in the same vein. And China and Russia, together with the United States, are among the three leading space powers of the Earth. Two against one - it inspires certain hopes.

That is why one should take very seriously the words of Wernher von Braun that if aliens are included in the list of enemies of the United States, then the use of space weapons against them, including space weapons, will be justified?

Space-based weapons against US enemies (whether they be aliens or some of the world powers) may well be used by the US leadership as long as citizens believe in this scenario.

By the way, everything I told you about has already come true! Let me give as an example another event that I witnessed in 1977, when I was still working at Fairchild Industries. I was present at one meeting where the perspectives of the 1991 "Gulf War" were discussed! This, by the way, was one of the main reasons that made me drastically change my attitude to work in this corporation and quit.

I looked at diagrams and graphs, heard speeches about potential enemies of the United States, about the use of high-precision weapons using space guidance systems. Neither I, nor most of the people who were then in the conference room, had even heard of anything like that.

Here is proof that wars are planned long before they start. My husband can easily confirm my words: when three months remained before the start of the “Gulf War” (which, as we remember, started on January 17, 1991, when the US launched Operation Desert Storm), I began to carefully follow the news on television. My husband, seeing me literally chained to the TV screen, once laughed and said: “Carol, you are crazy! What is the Gulf War? No one even talks about the war!”

And then, at the 1977 meeting, it was said that the "Gulf War" would definitely happen, since huge amounts of money had already been invested in the development of space guidance systems and more advanced weapons systems. And this whole complex will definitely need to be tested in the mode of real combat operations.

The development of more and more new weapons systems is one of the main driving forces in creating a "list of enemies" and predicting military conflicts. The war is essential in order to test new weapons in combat conditions, put them into service and determine the budget for the development of new weapon systems.

If you follow how weapons systems are developed and improved, you will definitely notice an obvious trend. In each of the major military conflicts, ever newer, ever more perfect, ever more deadly weapons are necessarily used. Now the next step is the deployment of weapons in outer space.

It is possible to place only three geostationary satellites at an altitude of 22,300 kilometers above the Earth's surface. And with their help to control the entire surface of the globe. With just three satellites! Now imagine what they could do if the latest military technology were launched into outer space!

Carol, did Dr. von Braun talk to you about 2012, which, according to this point of view, will be the year of the “end of the world”?

No, he never mentioned this date, but very often he repeated the idea that the time factor is extremely important. In his understanding - the time that is necessary to finally prevent the placement of weapons of mass destruction in outer space. He said the following: “Before corporate interests are properly funded, before lethal weapons systems are deployed in space, that is, where they are as dangerous as they are right next to us, we must achieve a complete and final ban on the placement of space-based weapons on planet Earth.

Age of Myths

It is believed that the 20th century was that period in the history of mankind, when the systems of mass communication were developing with unprecedented leaps and bounds. Telegraph, telephone, radio, cinematography, television, cellular communications, the Internet - even this short list is quite impressive.

It would seem that such a rapid development of telecommunication systems opens up truly gigantic opportunities for humanity in general and for an individual person to become familiar with the scientific, cultural, historical heritage, to exchange information for the purpose of education, enlightenment, discovering more and more new secrets of the universe.

And what do we see in the harsh reality? And we see that it was the 20th century that became the era when myth-making acquired hypertrophied proportions. This is directly related to the topic of the mysteries of the lunar programs of the USSR and the USA, and indeed the exploration of outer space. Reading other texts, listening to other speeches, it is impossible to understand: whether a person deliberately engages in disinformation (but why?), or whether he is stupid or because of incomprehensible haste, he operates with facts too freely, engaging in frank substitution of concepts.

Here are just two, but very illustrative examples.

In the public consciousness of modern Russia in recent years, the idea that the scientific and technological developments of US scientists have significantly outstripped the developments of their colleagues from the USSR has become more deeply rooted. Which, they say, gave the Americans the opportunity, by concentrating their will and mind into a fist, to get ahead of the Soviet Union not only in the exploration of the moon, but also in landing the first man on the Earth’s satellite in July 1969.

Here is a very recent example of this kind.

On April 12, 2011, on the air of the Echo of Moscow radio station, as part of the No Fools program, Sergei Korzun's interview with cosmonaut Musa Manarov was broadcast. During the conversation, speaking about how well the first manned flight into space was prepared, how it was connected with politics, the broadcaster, in particular, noted: “The confrontation between two large world systems represented by the United States and the Soviet Union required some kind of quick , breakthrough solutions. Journalists recently recalled that the first satellite of the Earth in 1957 was launched a day earlier than the Americans exactly because the Americans announced this launch in advance.

And here are the facts. The first artificial Earth satellite was launched in the USSR on October 4, 1957. The first artificial satellite of the United States was launched on January 31, 1958. The launch of the Soviet satellite, of course, had political significance. Every radio amateur could hear his call signs anywhere in the world: after all, back in June 1957, detailed recommendations on receiving artificial satellite signals from near-Earth orbit were published in advance on the pages of the Radio magazine.

Of course, this dealt a colossal blow to the image of the United States: after all, the American mass media in those years constantly exaggerated the topic of the technical backwardness of the USSR. The United Press news agency then noted with bitterness: “90 percent of the talk about artificial satellites of the Earth came from the United States. As it turned out, 100 percent of the case fell on Russia.”

And here is a similar example of disinformation of foreign origin.

On July 21, 2009, all progressive mankind celebrated the 40th anniversary of the American astronauts' landing on the lunar surface. In 1969, the Apollo 11 spacecraft with Neil Armstrong (born 08/05/1930), Michael Collins (Michael Collins; born 10/31/1930) and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin ; born January 20, 1930) landed on the moon. The 40th anniversary of the moon landing was widely celebrated around the world. Naturally, the representatives of the "civilized countries" did not do without equivocation towards Russia.

On July 21, the French TV channel TF-1 aired a report by Christophe Gascard dedicated to the memorable date. The text of the report turned out to be so funny that it makes sense to quote it almost in its entirety with a few comments. Here, in particular, is what the American-centric Frenchman said.

“There is one country in the world where the fortieth anniversary of the landing of the Americans on the moon has not become the news of the day. This is Russia, the former Soviet Union, the country that lost this crazy competition: who will be the first to set foot on the surface of the moon.

Forty years have passed since the first steps on the moon - this event did not delight the Russians. The evidence for this is that the daily news did not have a story on this topic, only a message at the end of the issue. It's the same in the printed press - in no newspaper did the landing on the moon take the first page […].

It is worth noting that 40 years ago, the landing was generally completely silent. The first steps on the moon were not shown live on television. It was not until a few days later that propaganda briefly reported this feat.

The feat of the United States - therefore, the defeat of the USSR: the Cold War was in full swing. After the launch of the first satellite in 1957, the flight of Yuri Gagarin in 1961, on this day forty years ago, the Soviet Union lost the space battle. On July 20, 1969, the USSR had to admit defeat to the American rival.

Today, forty years later, Russia wants to take revenge - to conquer Mars. Scientific research is already underway in Moscow. The ultimate goal is to land on the "red planet" by 2030. And this time, the Russians definitely don’t want to be second.”

New space programs for the exploration of Mars, launched by the United States, the European Space Agency, and Russia, are a topic for a separate discussion. As for the 40th anniversary of the American moon landing...

As the thoughtful researchers of the "lunar odyssey" of the Americans have repeatedly noted, when the trio of US astronauts reached the surface of the Moon on July 20, 1969, the time was approaching midnight in the European part of the USSR. On the same day, and not a few days later, in a newscast on the Central Television of the Soviet Union, the announcer read out a message that at 23:17 Moscow time, the lunar cabin of the American Apollo 11 spacecraft had successfully landed on the Moon in area of ​​the Sea of ​​Tranquility.

And when the American astronauts stepped onto the surface of the moon (it was already July 21), the clock was 2 hours 57 minutes GMT. In Moscow at that moment it was about six o'clock in the morning. What kind of live broadcast on television could we talk about?

This is how myths are born. But here are the questions: why the scientific program of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for the exploration of the moon, so successfully launched, was frozen for a long 30 years by the mid-1970s? Indeed, in the period from 1978 to 1980, NASA planned to build a manned station in lunar orbit, and no later than 1983 - to deploy the first permanent base station on the Moon itself. Why were these plans put on hold?

Why was the Soviet project for the construction of the Zvezda lunar base, developed under the guidance of Academician Vladimir Barmin, shelved in 1972? Why exactly in the same year, 1972, the last manned flight of NASA astronauts to the Moon (“Apollo-17”) took place?

At the official level, the termination of the implementation of scientific lunar programs, both in the USSR and in the USA, was most often explained by their high cost. But was that the only reason? It seems not.

To be continued...

It seemed as soon as Apollo 11 took off from the launch platform, the world entered a new era of space exploration. Among the people who watched the launch from the launch room 30 years ago was Dr. Wernher von Braun, the creator of the Saturn rocket, on which astronauts were supposed to go to the moon. He promised that this space journey would open up new frontiers for man. From the surface of the Earth, the ships will set off to surf the Universe, benefiting science and all of humanity. Von Braun became America's new Columbus.

Wernher von Braun and his dreams of space

Wernher von Braun, whose biography is revealed in the article, dreamed of space since childhood. He lived to make his dream a reality. He believed that space flight was a necessary step in the evolution of mankind, and fate would help him take this step. However, the new dawn of science has become for some people a painful memory of years of backbreaking labor practically as slaves.

Wernher von Braun, whose photo you see, was a very smart person. He wanted to build a rocket at any cost. He believed that the fate of mankind was the conquest of space, and he was ready to pay for it. The biography of Wernher von Braun has become an endless crusade. He was ready for anything, just to make a breakthrough into space. The spacecraft he created to fly to the Moon on the basis of a ballistic missile was a new step in evolution. While Brown himself took the step from a Nazi to a NASA employee.

Wernher von Braun family

Interest in the stars originated with Werner in Berlin in the 1920s. He was born into an aristocratic German family. For many centuries, their family owned lands in the east of Germany. Having taken the post of minister, the head of the family moved to his Berlin residence. Werner was the second of his three sons. Great attention was paid to the upbringing of children in the family. It was thanks to this that Werner's interest in the stars arose. When he became a teenager, this interest was transformed into a passion for rockets. Werner's interest was shared by thousands of his fellow citizens. Many believed that a large enough rocket would lift anything. During the First World War, the rocket was used as a weapon. Now, seized by another utopian idea, people believed that it would help them open the doors to a new peaceful era. The work of amateur rocket scientists inspired von Braun and his brother to experiment on their own. They built a small rocket launcher out of fireworks. She crashed into the basement window of a grocery store, and her father said that this was the end of the space epic for the brothers. Werner didn't stop.

Ideas by Hermann Oberth

Passion for rockets grew into an interest in astronomy when the parents gave the boy a telescope. At the same time, Werner came across a book that described how a liquid-fuel rocket could be used for interplanetary flights. The ideas of Oberth, the author of the book, reached the general public later, when he was invited as a technical consultant to Fritz Lang's Woman in the Moon. The film showed the process of preparing a liquid fuel rocket for flight.

The film told what needs to be done to launch a rocket. A multi-stage rocket rose into the air, the steps fell off - the viewer got an idea of ​​weightlessness. To some extent, this film foresaw the events that would happen 50-60 years later. It was a prophetic film and people could see what would happen in the future. This film irrevocably changed the biography of Wernher von Braun. From now on, he began to call Hermann Oberth his guiding star.

At school, von Braun began writing about space travel. Quotes by Wernher von Braun began to be repeated all around. “Surely,” he wrote, “one day a man will set foot on the moon.” He was a talented student. His comrades recognized his craving for leadership. After high school, von Braun joined a group of rocket science enthusiasts and began designing his own liquid propellant rockets. He never tired of repeating to his colleagues that soon they would become living witnesses of the first flight into space. It seemed to many that he had gone mad and wasted his time. Von Braun liked to repeat that for the sake of success he was ready for a lot.

Cooperation with the Nazis

Hitler was impressed by Brown's success, but he was dissatisfied with the speed of work. In the official photo, Wernher von Braun barely managed to smile. The meeting didn't go well. Hitler said that he was not interested in discoveries that would take years to complete. Six months later, Germany entered the war with England and the allies. Work on the rocket proceeded at an accelerated pace. The war did not affect von Braun's dedication to work. He was about 30 years old and suddenly had practically unlimited funds for development in his hands. Concerned above all about the rocket, in 1937 von Braun joined the National Socialist Party.

Heinrich Himmler invited him to join the SS. This was good for the rocket program, and Werner agreed. 5 years after the start of work, the rocket was ready for testing. On October 3, 1942, the A-4 was launched. The Nazis could celebrate the creation of new weapons. However, for von Braun and his associates, this was only the first step towards space travel. They did not seem to realize that they had created a terrible weapon. Wernher von Braun was determined. He assured that the help of the Nazis was just a necessary evil that would help him fulfill his dream immediately after the end of the war.

"Instrument of Retribution"

After the first launch, luck seemed to turn away from scientists - out of 11 subsequent launches, only two were partially successful. It was necessary to enlist the support of Hitler. Von Braun feared that sooner or later Hitler would lose his patience and shut down the project. They went to a demonstration that might get Hitler's attention. In the public cinema at Hitler's headquarters, von Braun held one of the most important meetings of his life. He demonstrated a record of a successful launch. The film's title reminded the Fuhrer of his premature skepticism.

He said: "We have succeeded!". Hitler changed his mind after the presentation of the film. He stated that this film is of national importance and should be distributed immediately to raise morale. The A-4 missile was renamed to reflect the Fuhrer's hope. Now it has become known as the "Instrument of Retribution", with the help of which Hitler hoped to win the war.

Work in a concentration camp

Wernher von Braun's rocket was built in a secret underground factory in the Harz mountains. A concentration camp was set up to work on the rocket. First, it was necessary to expand the underground tunnel. For 5 months, 8,000 people saw virtually no daylight while digging this tunnel. They were treated extremely cruelly by the SS guards who monitored their work. Thousands of people died from overwork. Many were killed by the guards.

Von Braun often visited the tunnel. Recently discovered documents confirm that he attended meetings when the use of slave labor was discussed. At one of these meetings, it was decided to replace the dead prisoners with 2,000 French prisoners. In addition, von Braun often visited the Buchenwald concentration camp, which was located nearby.

First missile attack

The first V-2 rockets were fired at London on the evening of September 8, 1944. A new era of warfare has begun. The missile strike claimed the lives of 5 thousand people. Almost all of them are civilians. Von Braun, who was in charge of development, seemed surprised by the results of the launch. He said that this should not have happened. He built the rocket to get to the moon, not to take other people's lives. Sometimes Brown began to realize that the Nazis were losing the war and made plans to do without their support.

At one of the parties, Werner imprudently spoke out about his concerns. The conversation was turned over to the Führer, and Brown spent two weeks in custody. However, very soon he returned the location of Hitler and he granted Werner the highest award that civilians were awarded for loyalty to the Reich. However, this did not change Brown's skepticism about the outcome of the war. These interesting facts about Wernher von Braun will not go unnoticed.

Former Enemies, New Allies

In the winter of 1944, he carefully interviewed his colleagues to find out who among them was ready to work for the enemy. Von Braun decided that he could continue working in America. No other country could afford to develop such a large-scale project. When the Soviet troops came close to the Peenemünde training ground, a decision was made to evacuate. The USSR was no less impressed by the rocket than the United States. However, the transfer of developments to the Russians was out of the question. Everyone was interested in the rocket.

After the war, the Russians had a list of people wanted, and von Braun was at the top of it. When Hitler's death was officially announced, von Braun made a pact with the American army. The biography of Wernher von Braun at that moment changed dramatically. Former opponents fulfilled all the wishes of scientists. Werner, as well as key people in the project, were offered to sign contracts with the American army. A month earlier, the Americans had liberated Mittelwerk. There they found only living skeletons.

Over 20 thousand people died during the production of weapons. Half of them - directly while working on the "V-2". However, the US Army was not interested in ethics issues. They needed Wernher von Braun, and the CIA began searching for dirt in the German archives. The found documents were destroyed. There was no mention of this in military reports. A few months after the end of the war, von Braun and his colleagues were back on horseback. The leadership strongly encouraged intensive experiments, trying to win the war. 70 rockets were delivered to the New Mexico desert.

Von Braun's main task was to train the military in rocket science. However, he had enough time to dream about space flights. Von Braun got this opportunity thanks to the threat of war. The Soviet Union terrified the United States with its military might. By 1950, communism began to appear to America as the greatest threat to prosperity. To end the Cold War, they needed new missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. A new alliance appeared on the scene in the person of Wernher von Braun and the United States.

New landfill in Huntsville

The landfill was moved south, to Alabama, to Huntsville, a small poor town with a population of less than 20,000 people. Within a few decades, he was to become a city of rockets. On the outskirts, the army placed its arsenals. Finally, a really big project fell into the hands of von Braun. Thousands of Americans were working on the Redstone rocket under the guidance of German scientists, but von Braun was intent on breaking down national barriers. He stopped wearing a leather coat.

Brown's accent did not disappear, but he spoke good English. He started a family. Three years before moving to Hatsville, he married his cousin. Wernher von Braun and his wife moved to Huntsville, where his second daughter was born. Then he had a son. Von Braun's efforts to become part of the world around him were rewarded. The scientists took American citizenship. The past is far behind. Maria von Braun - the wife of Wernher von Braun supported her husband in all his projects and undertakings.

As technical head of the Missile Office, von Braun was able to lobby for the interests of the space program. He has already managed to interest the world in rockets. Now he was trying to draw attention to the stars. It was necessary to find an approach to taxpayers. He believed that it was impossible to achieve success if one did not instill in the souls of people a craving for unexplored cosmic expanses. Von Braun himself faced a difficult task - to turn the plots of science fiction films into reality.

Von Braun became a missionary for interplanetary travel. The famous flight projects of Wernher von Braun to Mars and the Moon become public. His first achievement was a series of articles in a well-known magazine. He introduced readers to his vision of the future world. The journey to the stars will begin with a huge four-stage rocket that will launch a satellite and then a space station. Man will go to the Moon and Mars. However, von Braun's dreams were not a utopia of peaceful coexistence in space. Rockets could be used to launch nuclear warheads. For the readers of the magazine, this was a revelation.

USSR one step ahead

However, despite von Braun's best efforts to woo the Americans, the USSR made the first step into space. On September 4, 1957, the first artificial satellite was launched. The success of the USSR led to the beginning of the space race Wernher von Braun and Korolev became the main rivals. The national pride of the Americans suffered even more when the rocket created for the first launch of the Avangard satellite exploded right on the launch pad. As von Braun predicted. This opened up new opportunities for Werner. Peaceful cooperation was forgotten. Von Braun and the military had to save the face of American technology. In January 1959, the first American satellite was launched.

Von Braun was almost 47 years old - he managed to achieve worldwide fame and recognition. Success inspired Werner, and he was already planning expansions of the space program. However, the President was unimpressed and did not support the idea of ​​human spaceflight. He was more attracted to the use of satellites for scientific purposes. Von Braun and his followers took a romantic view of rocket science. Despite the President's skepticism, the training of astronauts began. In 1959, it was decided to launch the von Braun rocket.

Flight of Yuri Gagarin

The project became part of a new national space agency known as NASA. Von Braun finally got the opportunity he had long dreamed of. However, he again had to catch up with his competitors. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin spent two hours in Earth orbit. The celebrations in Moscow were broadcast all over the world. America's prestige was dealt another blow. It was especially keenly felt by the new President John F. Kennedy.

The following month, the first American astronaut made an orbit on a von Braun rocket, but only for a few minutes. Von Braun was sure that the only way to bypass the Soviet Union was to land a man on the moon first. From that moment on, Wernher von Braun, the man who sold the Moon (as Denis Pashkevich would call him in his famous book), threw all his strength into the realization of this dream.

Flight to the moon

In 1962, Kennedy visited Huntsville to see how things were progressing. 20 years after working on a rocket for Hitler, von Braun was back in his element. His team designed the giant three-stage Saturn V rocket. Its height was over 100 m. There was no such engineering structure in America yet. Over the next 10 years, von Braun's astronauts were to explore the depths of the universe. The moon was first on the priority list. However, the ambitions of the scientist knew no bounds - he was already planning the next step.

On the morning of July 16, 1969, millions of people gathered on the coast of Florida. All eyes were on the Apollo 11 rocket. This was the climax of what von Braun had worked for years. Von Braun watched as his bird took off from the ground. He has repeatedly said in the press that a new era has begun in the development of mankind. The rocket, which he created with his colleagues, carried a person into a brighter future.

At this very moment, von Braun's past threatened his triumph. His fame attracted the attention of those who also had a chance to play a role in the creation of the spacecraft. Von Braun's past was buried 25 years ago, but the protests of the prisoners who took part in the construction of the V-2 reached the limit. Von Braun was asked to appear before a court dealing with wartime crimes. Formally, no charges were brought against him, but the former prisoners considered him morally responsible for their suffering.

The decline of von Braun's career

Thanks to the successful launch, Wernher von Braun, the man who sold the moon, opened up new horizons. NASA suggested that he start over. He had to leave his colleagues and the city he helped found. However, by the time he arrived in Washington, the situation had changed. The country was already leading the space race, and politicians wanted to spend taxpayer money on more pressing needs.

Even von Braun could not persuade them to finance a trip to Mars. After spending two fruitless years at NASA, von Braun submitted his resignation. His dream is over, but the biography of Wernher von Braun will forever remain in the memory of his followers.

The article contains only the first photo,
other illustrations added by me.

The article presents materials, including little-known ones, about the life and work of Wernher von Braun in Germany and the United States, the creator of the world's first long-range ballistic missile with a rocket engine - A-4 (V-2) and the heavy launch vehicle Saturn-V ”, which delivered American astronauts to the moon. The role of von Braun in the development of rocket engines of these rockets, including the F-1 and J-2, the creation of the infrastructure of the rocket industry in Germany and the United States, in the promotion of space flights is reflected, some features of von Braun as a person and as a general designer of rocket and rocket space complexes.

Wernher von Braun

In fact, there were much more missiles in his life, but two are the most important, landmark missiles of the twentieth century: the world's first "real" large long-range liquid-fueled ballistic missile A-4, aka V-2, which in 1944 city ​​hit London, Antwerp and other major cities of Western Europe, and the giant Saturn V space launch vehicle that delivered American astronauts to the moon in 1969. Wernher von Braun, to use our terminology, was the chief designer of these rockets. Fate was pleased to divide his life into two approximately equal parts - "German" and "American", and it proceeded under the conditions of the most notorious totalitarian fascist regime, and the American regime of "freedom and democracy" in a society of equal opportunities. The regimes used him, he used the regimes, but each pursued his own goals.

2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Wernher von Braun, and the 35th anniversary of his death is a double occasion to remind of the man who made the 20th century the century of rocket technology and astronautics.

How is it, and Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the founder of practical astronautics, whose name is associated with such triumphs of the Soviet Union as the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite and the first manned flight into space?

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev in rocket technology can de facto be considered the most talented student of von Braun's correspondence school, although Korolev himself never mentioned this anywhere, nor did his biographers write about it.

Not only Korolev - all Soviet chief designers of missile subsystems, incl. engines (V.P. Glushko) and control systems, ground vehicles - members of the first royal council of chief designers - are also, in fact, correspondence students of the von Braun engineering school.

The first large liquid rockets OKB S.P. Korolev and his cooperation - "one" (R-1) - a copy of the domestically produced V-2, "two" (R-2), "five" (R-5) - these are successive modernizations of Brown's rocket A-4. The engines of these missiles are the modernization and boosting of the V-2 engine.

And only the main missile of Korolev - the intercontinental "seven" (R-7) and its modifications with new engines V.P. Glushko allowed him to get ahead of von Braun in a certain time period and forever establish himself in the history of astronautics and world civilization in general.

Our rocket men in defeated Germany.

3.5 years after the tragic death of Korolev, von Braun took revenge: under his leadership, the grandiose, exceptionally reliable “lunar” Saturn-V rocket was created. Von Braun did what, for various reasons, none of the Soviet chief designers could do - neither Korolev, nor Chelomey, nor Yangel. The launch of a satellite and a man into space after the USSR was repeated by other countries, but no one repeated the flight of the crew with landing on the moon and returning to Earth after the Americans. I haven't done it yet, but more than 40 years have passed.

Vasily Pavlovich Mishin, associate and associate of Korolev, his long-term first deputy, who headed the Design Bureau after Korolev, a man who cannot be reproached for belittling Korolev’s merits, in 2001, to the question of journalist and writer Vladimir Gubarev “Do you think Korolev is the main space figure in the 20th century? replied: “I think that Wernher von Braun should be named first. He began to use rockets for military purposes. He made them weapons. And before him, they were still “toys”.

Wernher von Braun was born on March 23, 1912 in the Prussian town of Wirsitz (now the Polish town of Wyzhysk) into a well-born aristocratic family of Baron Magnus von Braun and Baroness Emma von Braun, nee von Quistorp. Werner was the second of three von Braun sons.

Before school, Werner was mainly raised by his mother, from whom, according to his father, Brown inherited his abilities. Emma knew 6 European languages ​​and established a tradition in the family to speak only one of them every day of the week. She also taught Werner good manners and playing the piano (then Paul Hindemith himself would become his teacher). The compositional experiments of the young Werner in the style of Hindemith have been preserved. Later, a cello was added to the piano. Werner never parted with music. Bach was his favorite composer. In his free time, the adult Werner willingly sat down at the piano, playing, as a rule, without notes.

In 1923 the family moved to Berlin and Werner was sent to a French gymnasium. He was not a diligent student, but he conceived and himself made a kind of rocket car from a fruit cart on wheels and firework rockets, launching this device on the street, scaring the neighbors. Probably, this was his first acquaintance with rockets. On his thirteenth birthday, his mother gave Werner a telescope, and he enjoyed looking at the starry sky and the moon.

In 1925, Werner got his hands on a book that struck him, starting with the title. It was a book by one of the pioneers of rocket technology, physicist Hermann Oberth, "Rocket into Interplanetary Space", the first edition of which was published in 1923.

In the introduction, Oberth wrote:

"one. With the current state of science and technology, it is possible to create machines that can rise above the limits of the earth's atmosphere.

2. With further development, these machines will be able to reach such speeds that, presented to themselves in space, they will not fall on the earth's surface and will even be able to leave the Earth's gravity.

3. Such machines can be built in such a way that people (maybe even without harm to health) can fly them.

4. Under certain economic conditions, the construction of such machines will be justified. Such conditions can be reached in a few decades.

I would like to prove these four statements.” It was breathtakingly interesting. But as for the evidence, there are too many incomprehensible formulas and drawings.

Werner asks his school teacher: "What must be done to understand Oberth's book?" You need to learn math and physics properly.

At this time, Werner did not shine with knowledge of these subjects.

In a couple of years he will become the best student in physics and mathematics. After all, he had a goal - to master the book of Oberth. In 1927, he knew her, as they say, close to the text. She became his guide to action.

February 15, 1927 The German Youth Newspaper publishes the first article by a 15-year-old, no, not a captain, but a student, "Journey to the Moon: Astronomical and Technical Aspects." In the same year, he wrote a letter to Oberth: “... I know that you believe in the future of missiles. So do I. That is why I take the liberty of sending you a small paper on rocket science that I recently wrote. Oberth sent back: “Don't stop, young man. If you continue like this, you will surely become a capable engineer.”

In 1928, Werner's parents transferred him to a boarding school near Weimar, an educational institution with stricter rules. Werner reads science fiction (Jules Verne, Wells) and non-fiction.

In 1930, Werner went to study at the Berlin Higher Technical School to become an engineer - the first engineer in the Braun family. In the same year, he had a personal meeting with Hermann Oberth and Werner became his assistant, participating in the preparation of tests of Oberth's Kegelduse liquid-propellant rocket engine, which ran on gasoline and liquid oxygen and developed a thrust of 7 kg. On June 23, 1930, after a series of successful launches, official engine tests were carried out, which were also successful. The engine ran steadily for 45.6 seconds. We emphasize that the future rocket designer began as an engine engineer.

Von Braun later wrote: “The experiments carried out by Oberth in Berlin in the late 1920s, which led to the creation of the Kegelduse, a liquid rocket engine, which was successfully demonstrated for the first time in 1930, were a new breakthrough into the Unknown. They became the starting point for the development of rocket science in Germany.

In 1932, von Braun passed his final exams and received the title of an aeronautical engineer. Werner understands that in order to build rockets, one must get acquainted with technology in general. To this end, he undergoes an internship at the Borsig locomotive factory in Berlin.

Werner understands that rocket science is an expensive pleasure. Who can allocate the necessary funds? The case helped to solve this problem. One day, the passengers of a taxi driven by 19-year-old Werner to replenish his student budget turned out to be two officers, the subject of their conversation was ... rockets! Very tactfully, the driver gave several remarks on the essence of the conversation, quite professional, after which an invitation followed to appear for a conversation at the General Headquarters of the Ground Forces - one of the interlocutors was Captain Walter Dornberger, who was involved in the army's missile program.

In Germany, weakened by the First World War and economic crises, the military turned their attention to missiles as a weapon, the development of which, unlike aviation and artillery, was not prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles.

The result of the meeting was a contract signed by von Braun with the military to work in the field of rocket science as a civilian specialist at an artillery range in Kummersdorf near Berlin.

On November 1, 1932, Werner set to work. Initially, his entire staff consisted of one mechanic. After becoming an employee of the range, von Braun received, through Colonel Becker, who was in charge of the ballistics department at the university, a small financial support for conducting experiments needed for the dissertation on which he was working. Already in January 1933, Brown put a water-cooled engine with a thrust of 140 kg on a test bench. The tests were accompanied by explosions, contamination of valves, fires in cable trunks and other troubles. Brown, using the money of the military department, attracts qualified consultants and places orders for individual engine parts at specialized enterprises.

A-2. Germany, 1933.

Together with the group of Walter Riedel, von Braun is developing a project for an engine with a thrust of 300 kg, using liquid oxygen (oxidizer) and 75% alcohol as fuel - this pair was once proposed by Oberth. The secret rocket with this engine was given the open name "Unit-1", abbreviated as A-1. The rocket exploded while trying to launch. They immediately began to develop an improved version of the A-2 rocket, made two copies, which were jokingly called "Max" and "Moritz" after the names of then popular comedians. In December 1934, these missiles were launched on the island of Borkum and in the North Sea. Rockets launched vertically rose to a height of 2.3 km. It was the first success, though "low". Dornberger spoke of the young von Braun in this way: “I knew that as soon as he really got carried away with some technical question, the answer would be found by the power of his undeniable genius. He had an almost incredible gift for extracting from the mass of scientific data, information from the literature, discussions and visits to enterprises the most important thing that was relevant to our work: he evaluated this information, scrolled through it in his head and used it in the right place. He forgot, or, like useless garbage, threw out everything that had nothing to do with him.

When he clearly realized what he wanted to achieve, then he was possessed by stubbornness, rejecting any hints or deviations from the goal. And with indomitable perseverance, at full steam, he moved along the course that he considered right.

At the end of 1934, 22-year-old Wernher von Braun successfully defended his dissertation "Constructive, theoretical and experimental considerations for the problem of liquid rockets" and received a Phd degree - Doctor of Philosophy (this approximately corresponds to our Ph.D. degree).

Von Braun's next rocket is the A-3 at a range of 50 km. For its flight tests, the station in Kummersdorf is too small. At the end of 1935, on the advice of his mother, Wernher von Braun chose a sparsely populated place for a new missile range - the island of Usedom in the Baltic Sea, located near the fishing village of Peenemünde - where Werner's grandfather once hunted ducks. In 1936, von Braun managed to convince the command of the Lufftwaffe to buy out the land, which he looked after for a training ground. The new secret missile range was named Peenemünde Army Experimental Station. The range allowed rocket firing at a maximum range of about 300 km, the flight path passed over the sea. Peenemünde eventually became more than a training ground. It was the first and largest rocket science center in the world. The construction of the center was carried out on a grand scale, for about 3 years, the military spared no money. A town for scientific and engineering personnel and a design bureau (block IV), factory workshops and laboratories, a plant for the production of liquid oxygen, a power plant, an airfield, the largest supersonic wind tunnel in Europe for blowing out rocket models built at the insistence of von Braun, more than 10 large test benches, incl. stand No. 7 for firing tests of missiles, launch sites, barracks for workers, access roads - railway and highway. The result was a unique complex: in fact, a research institute, a design bureau, a plant and an experimental base were assembled on the same territory, including for flight testing of missiles. Braun was the technical leader, and Dornberger was the military commander of the Peenemünde-OST (Penemünde-West was under the jurisdiction of the Luftwaffe). Orders for the missile center were carried out by the largest German firms. In 1937, von Braun and his staff moved to Peenemünde.

A-3 rocket launches began in the winter of 1937. All four flight tests turned out to be emergency due to failures in the control system. Already at the design stage of the A-3, Wernher von Braun and Walter Riedel conceived a large combat missile, which became known as the A-4.

The terms of reference for the missile, issued by the commander-in-chief of the ground forces, prescribed the delivery of a warhead weighing 1 ton at a distance of up to 300 km. Estimates showed that the engine of such a rocket should have a thrust of about 25 tons. Von Braun, along with Riedel, makes sketches of the layout of the rocket. 10 years after the start of theoretical studies, the A-4 rocket had the following characteristics: length - 14 m, diameter - 1.65 m, stabilizer span - 3.55 m, launch weight - 12.9 tons, engine thrust - 25 tons (ground), warhead weight - 1 ton, range - 275 km.

Wernher von Braun was the first to involve professionals in the development - scientists and engineers, specialized industrial enterprises, i.e. diverse teams that Brown brought together to achieve a common goal.

Scientists were recruited through the "Imperial Research Council". All 30 institutes of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (an analogue of our Academy of Sciences), including the German Research Institute for Rocket Technology, the Hermann Goering Institute, were puzzled. These institutes increased their staff by 6 times within a few months.

A-4. Germany.

Dozens of laboratories at industrial concerns were employed in the von Braun rocket program, almost all technical research institutions and several specialized design bureaus of Nazi Germany, in 1939 4,000 technical specialists were withdrawn from the army and sent to work on the rocket program. And later, when mass production of the A-4 rocket began, 800 military factories in Germany and from Nazi-occupied European countries were involved as subcontractors. There was a clear system of orders and supplies of components, even in war conditions.

The controlled A-4 BRDD with a free vertical take-off of the Earth-to-Earth class was intended to hit area targets with predetermined coordinates. The rocket was equipped with an open-circuit rocket engine designed by Dr. Walter Thiel on fuel components alcohol (75%, from potatoes) - liquid oxygen with an unthinkable thrust of 25 tons at that time. The maximum level of thrust that existed at that time in the world was exceeded by 17 times! It was a really big jump.

Von Braun was directly involved in the development of the engine, in particular, it was he who proposed placing 8 prechambers of the same type with oxidizer and fuel nozzles along two concentric circles on the engine head.

A-4. Germany.

The most important innovation in the A-4 rocket was a turbopump unit (TPU) for supplying propellant components to the combustion chamber. “When von Braun set out the requirements for pumps to the personnel of the plant that produces the pump, he involuntarily expected objections that such requirements were impossible to fulfill. Instead, everyone listened in silence, and when the pump specialists began to speak, it turned out that the required pumps resembled one type of fire pump. The existing samples of centrifugal fire pumps were the basis for the design of rocket fuel pumps.

The most difficult problem in the development of the LRE of the A-4 rocket turned out to be the creation of a critical part of the jet nozzle - burnouts occurred exactly there. Regenerative cooling with alcohol through the gap formed by the inner and outer shells of the pear-shaped combustion chambers was not enough. A way out of this situation was proposed by engineer Pulman by creating a layer of relatively cold alcohol vapor between the hot jet of outflowing gases and the inner wall of the nozzle by injecting alcohol through special holes in the inner wall of the engine in the region of the critical section. The ignition of the cooled alcohol film was prevented by the absence of oxygen in this place. This method of cooling was called "film internal cooling". The engine had 4 curtain belts - the first one was slightly higher than the critical section, and the rest were lower. Since then, this technical solution has become a classic of rocket engine building.

In 1940, firing tests of the combustion chamber of the A-4 rocket engine began. Development, research and testing at Peenemünde went hand in hand with construction. In 1937-1940. in fact, more than 550 million Reichsmarks were invested in the construction of the Peenemünde center - a huge amount at that time. "Equipment of the center with the latest measuring equipment and special equipment was carried out by all the leading electrical and radio engineering companies in Germany" .

As B.E. wrote Chertok, “... with all our anti-fascist attitude, it is necessary to pay tribute to the energy and confidence, enthusiasm and organizational skills with which the military leader Dornberger and the technical leader von Braun acted. They had a clear idea of ​​the scope of work to achieve their goals and the courage to create unprecedented infrastructure.

In 1943, the core staff at Peenemünde was 15,000. The new stands made it possible to carry out fire tests of engines with thrust from 100 kg to 100 tons.

At the end of 1941, the first firing bench test of the A-4 rocket was carried out, during which, due to a personnel error, an explosion occurred, the rocket and the bench were destroyed. In 1942, experimental launches began. The first successful rocket launch, the fourth in a row, took place on October 3, 1942. For the first time in the world, a rocket reached supersonic speed and touched the edge of space, reaching a height of 90 km and flying 192 km. Oberth himself, who was then in Peenemünde, congratulated von Braun and the developers. A large boulder was erected at the launch pad with the inscription: “October 3, 1942, this stone fell from my heart. Wernher von Braun.

After the first successful launch, there will be many more launches - more emergency ones than normal ones. 65,000 changes will be made to the design of the V-2 to eliminate defects, but the missile has not been brought to an acceptable level of reliability.

There will be a raid on Peenemünde by an armada of British bombers on the night of August 17-18, 1943. During the bombing, 735 people will die. Including the chief designer of the engine, Walter Thiel and his family, and von Braun will rescue technical documentation from the burning design bureau building, putting his life in danger.

With perseverance and bitterness, the Germans in the conditions of the war managed in a short time not completely, but to resume the work of Peenemünde; to build a huge underground plant "Mittelwerk" near Nordhausen and organize mass production of missiles with a design capacity of 30 missiles per day, up to 600 per month. In this case, the slave labor of foreign workers, prisoners of war, prisoners of concentration camps under the auspices of the SS was used; continue flight tests of the V-2 in Poland at the Blizna artillery range. In the spring of 1944, von Braun's life was put at risk for the second time when the engine shut off prematurely and the rocket began to fall on the launch pad where von Braun was located, and he was saved when the rocket exploded in the air.

In September 1944, V-2 rockets fired at London (more than 500 rockets), Antwerp, Paris with casualties and destruction. Only in London - 2,700 killed, 17,000 wounded, 26,000 houses destroyed (figures differ in German and English sources). The first combat use of liquid rockets against the civilian population did not demoralize the British and could not change the course of the Second World War, as the leaders of the Third Reich counted on. More people died in the production of V-2 rockets than from their combat use.

Technical Director Peenemünde Wernher von Braun will organize the evacuation of personnel and technical documentation (14 tons) to the south of Germany and, after Hitler's suicide, will decide on the voluntary surrender of the US Army. Soon, more than 100 of the best German specialists were sent to the United States.

Later, as a result of the special operation "Paperclip", the number of German specialists exceeded 785 people. Peenemünde's engineering thought worked right up to the evacuation. These are the projects of the A-4 extended-range cruise missile and the world's first project of the A-9/A-10 two-stage intercontinental missile designed to attack the United States.

Of particular historical interest are the proposed options for basing the V-2 rocket, which were decades ahead of their time:

- fortified starting position - a prototype of a mine launcher;

- combat railway complex;

- "Sea Launch" from a transport and launch container (TPC) towed to the launch site by a submarine of the XXI series. The scheme of the rocket in the TPK surprisingly resembles the scheme of a modern single-launch silo launcher. It is also proposed to place a TPK with a rocket on the deck of a submarine in a horizontal position, the container was raised before launch, and after the rocket took off, the boat could drop it.

In America, von Braun, working in the interests of the US Army, makes a successful upgrade of the V-2 - the reliable Redstone missile, the first American BRDD with an atomic warhead. The modification of this rocket became the first stage of the Jupiter-S launch vehicle, which in 1958 launched the first American satellite, the Explorer, weighing 13.9 kg, into orbit. The competition between the Navy and the US Army deprived von Braun of the opportunity to implement the project to launch the Orbiter satellite weighing 2.9 kg. rocket "Redstone", which he made in 1954. After the launch of the first American satellite, von Braun became an American celebrity (he received American citizenship in 1955).

On July 21, 1958, on the basis of the US National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, at the suggestion of President Eisenhower, a civilian space agency was created - the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

On October 1, 1958, NASA began work and soon proposed the Mercury project - the launch of a spacecraft with a man on board into orbit, and the first flights of astronauts were planned as suborbital.

Center for Space Flights. J. Marshall began work on July 1, 1960 and Wernher von Braun was appointed its leader, as the Americans say - "a man in his place", and his team moved to NASA from the Redstone Army Arsenal.

Brown's team, 15 months after the launch of the first American satellite, with the support of President Eisenhower, began work on a program of manned space flight.

On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin successfully completed his orbital space flight on the Vostok-1 spacecraft designed by S.P. Korolev's design bureau. The prestige of the United States was dealt a second, after the launch of the first satellite of the Earth, a sensitive blow.

On April 17, 1961, the American invasion of Cuba failed, and Kennedy was forced to publicly take responsibility for the fiasco. On April 20, 1961, Kennedy sent a memorandum to Lyndon Johnson, whom he appointed chairman of the National Space Research Council, asking him to evaluate the state and goals of space research in the United States. “Can we bypass the Soviet Union by launching a laboratory into space, or by flying around the moon, or by landing a rocket on the moon, or by sending a rocket with a man on board to fly to the moon and back? Is there any other space program that promises an impressive result in which we can be the first? Kennedy asked.

Johnson enthusiastically took up the search for a space initiative and made a request to von Braun. The opinion of von Braun and the leadership of NASA was that if the United States began to develop large launch vehicles, then they had an excellent chance of being the first to land astronauts on the moon and return them to Earth, and thus defeat the USSR in the space race. Lyndon Johnson held a meeting of experts, all the participants of which unequivocally said "yes" to the question - will we send a man to the moon.

On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American to travel into space, though in a suborbital flight. Von Braun's converted Redstone rocket was used as a launch vehicle. On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy delivered an extraordinary message to Congress in which he said: "I believe that our nation should set itself the goal of landing a man on the moon and safely returning him to Earth before the end of this decade." Thus, at the beginning of the prestigious US Lunar Project, there was the political will and the word of President Kennedy.

With congressional approval, the US Lunar Program was given the green light.

Von Braun and his team began by designing an experimental Saturn-1 rocket using oxygen-kerosene fuel components. At the first stage of this rocket, 8 modified Jupiter rocket engines were used, which created a total thrust of 680 tons. The height of the rocket was 38.1 m, and the payload mass thrown into orbit was 10 tons. It was mainly used to test individual components of the future lunar complex, but, in addition, launched several research satellites into orbit.

Following the Saturn-1, a similar, somewhat improved Saturn-1B launch vehicle was created, the propulsion system of its first stage consisted of 8 improved Jupiter rocket engines (fuel components - liquid oxygen and kerosene) with a total thrust of 745 tons. For the second stage used a new J-2 engine with a thrust of 104 tons on cryogenic fuel components - liquid oxygen and hydrogen. The launch weight of the Saturn-1B was 589 tons, the height was 68 m, the payload was 16 tons. The Saturn-1B rocket was used mainly to test the II stage hydrogen engine.

With the help of the Saturn-1B launch vehicle in 1966, 2 launches of the descent vehicle of the experimental main unit of the Apollo spacecraft were carried out along a ballistic trajectory with atmospheric entry at a speed of 8 km/s. In the same year, a Saturn-1B rocket was launched to test the re-launch of the J-2 oxygen-hydrogen rocket engine.

Following the two-stage Saturn-1 and Saturn-1B, Wernher von Braun's team conceived the three-stage Saturn-V. The propulsion system of the 1st stage consisted of 5 new F-1 engines fueled with kerosene + liquid oxygen with a thrust of 680 t X 5 = 3401 t. The second and third stages used the J-2 hydrogen-oxygen engine: 5 engines in the second stage and 1 in third. According to the initial design, the Saturn-V launch vehicle had a launch weight of more than 2700 tons, a height of 111 m, could deliver a load of 140 tons into orbit or send a load of 47 tons to the Moon.

In 1967, the first unmanned launch of the Saturn-V LV with the experimental main unit of the Apollo spacecraft along a ballistic trajectory was made to test the descent vehicle during atmospheric entry at a speed of 11 km/s. In 1968, a similar launch was repeated. In the same year, a lunar spacecraft (Saturn-1B launch vehicle) without a crew was tested in near-Earth orbit, then, using the same launch vehicle, it was launched into the orbit of an Earth satellite and the main unit with a crew, and, finally, into the selenocentric orbit of the Saturn-V launch vehicle. "The main block of the Apollo was launched with 3 astronauts on board.

Let us pay attention to some of the main points of the American "lunar" program, following B.I. Gubanov. “The development of the main provisions of the program for creating powerful carriers, which became the basis of the Apollo program, began not from the moment it was promulgated in May 1961 by President Kennedy, but from the moment the creation of powerful single-chamber open-circuit rocket engines F-1 and J-2 began in 1958 The use of liquid hydrogen on the J-2 engine as a combustible made it possible to ultimately solve the problem of the energy of the launch vehicle. The progressive program of experimental testing of the complex and the principle of its complete completion (before entering flight tests) reduced the risk of fulfilling the target task to the calculated one. The following main technical problems were successfully solved on the way to the creation of the Saturn-V-Apollo rocket and space complex.

First of all, the creation of a unique F-1 first stage engine with a thrust of 680t. The difficulties were not only in the large geometric dimensions of this engine (height - 5.9 m), which required large industrial equipment, but, most importantly, in overcoming the barrier of combustion instability in the engine combustion chamber. Few believed in the success of the development.

The overwhelming majority of specialists from the leading engine design bureaus in the Soviet Union did not believe in the possibility of creating such an engine. And those who sympathized and offered to start developing domestic large engines were accused of record-breaking and gigantomania, and calmed down on this.

B.I. Gubanov had the opportunity to repeatedly meet with the chief engineer of this engine, Jerry Thomson, who from the very beginning, working in the von Braun team, was a direct and direct participant in the birth of this super-powerful engine.

“For engine engineers, harnessing the uncontrollable phenomenon of ignition and achieving sustained combustion is engineering art and intuition. Empiricism in this process occupies the main place. Answering the question “How did you decide to take such a desperate step?”, Thomson said that this step was made through suffering, prepared, weighed, calculated, and most importantly, it was “necessary” ... Therefore, they “crossed themselves” and stepped into the unknown. And the problem was solved, again, through "engineering sweat".

The next problem is the longitudinal oscillations of the Saturn-V rocket, and the most dangerous were the longitudinal oscillations in the area of ​​operation of the first stage propulsion system. The technical aspect of eliminating high-frequency oscillations in the engine chamber of low-frequency longitudinal oscillations in a closed system of the rocket body - remote control will be briefly described below.

The creation of the oxygen-hydrogen stage - the second stage of the Saturn-V - was a "problematic place" and for a relatively long period was the main reason for the disruption of the work schedule.

Saturn 5

Compliance with the specified mass characteristics. This design problem accompanied the development at all stages. The lunar cabin turned out to be especially overweight (14.7 tons instead of the design 13.5 tons), so the amount of fuel had to be reduced to ensure horizontal flight at a low altitude above the lunar surface in order to select a suitable landing site. Fuel is only enough for two minutes of flight.

The creation and selection of new structural materials, especially for engines and oxygen-hydrogen stages, has become a special direction in the Saturn-V creation program. A number of new metallic materials (alloys) were developed, which received brand names, for example, Inconel X-750, Invar, etc.

The F-1 engine was developed in 1959-1966. Big engine, big problems. Problem number 1 - to eliminate the instability of combustion in the chamber of the engine F-1. Twenty of the 44 firing tests of the first F-1 engines failed due to destructive high frequency pressure fluctuations in the engine chamber.

At the Center. Marshall, a special committee was created to study the instability of combustion in the engine chamber, which was headed by Jerry Thomson. The committee included 6 permanent members and 5 consultants - from the Center. Marshall, from the Lewis Research Center, from the Air Force, from industry, from universities. A special unit for solving the problem of unstable combustion in the F-1 rocket engine was also created at Rocketdine.

Reacting to the deep concern of the Office of Manned Space Flight, in November 1962. von Braun prepared a special memorandum. He stressed the concern about this problem of the Center. Marshall and praised the steps taken at Rocketdyne. In turn, he did not promise a quick or easy solution. In the memorandum, von Braun set out a clear understanding of the situation. “Although many organizations have been working on solving the problem of combustion instability in LRE over the past 10 years, no one has yet come close to adequately understanding the process itself. Therefore, it was not possible to use appropriate nozzle head design criteria to ensure stable combustion in the engine chamber. This has forced the industry to take an almost entirely empirical approach to nozzle and combustion chamber design. Not only is this approach costly and time consuming, a technical solution for one engine is usually not suitable for another.”

Von Braun began an extensive study of the problem and suggested that universities, in particular, send graduate students to work on various aspects of the problem of unstable combustion in LRE. In March 1963, this problem was considered one of the most serious in the Saturn-Apollo program. It took Rocketdyne 12 months to develop an injector head design suitable for engine pre-flight testing, but some unfortunate anomalies persisted. By July 1964, work to eliminate the cases of unstable combustion continued, and Rocketdyne received an additional contract for $22 million with specific instructions to accelerate research.

Significant theoretical work has been done by two Princeton researchers, David Harrier and Luigi Crocco, and by Richard Prim of the Lewis Research Center. NASA headquarters even granted von Braun's request to send representatives from Rocketdyne and the Center. Marshall to discuss this problem with Crocco in Rome, where he was on vacation.

Demanding attention to detail has led to minor changes in the design of the nozzle, which, however, have led to significant results. After careful calculations, increasing the diameter of the fuel injection holes has led to one of the most important contributions to improving combustion stability. For this purpose, the values ​​of the angles at which the oxidizer and fuel jets collided were also corrected. The method of experimental evaluation of the design changes of the nozzle head and the chamber was also used, which consisted in creating an impulse disturbance from the explosion of a small “bomb”, which was attached to the firing bottom of the nozzle head. By the nature of the pressure change in the combustion chamber during the transient process, it was possible to judge the stability of this chamber design and estimate the stability margins, for example, by the duration of the transient process. Changing the dimensions of the "bomb" made it possible to obtain impulse disturbances of various magnitudes. At the beginning of this series of tests, the transient set in over 1600 milliseconds, leading to a dangerous state, a successful design after a disturbance "calmed down" in 100 milliseconds.

The final design of the injector head included redesigned fuel injectors (3700 units) and oxidizer injectors (2600 units) and rationally located anti-pulsation baffles on the firing bottom of the injector head in the form of two concentric rings and 12 radial ribs dividing the combustion zone into 13 parts. These seemingly minor changes required about 18 months of work, resulting in a design with excellent damping characteristics and permission from the Marshall Center to start the F-1 engine in 1965. Thus, it took Rocketdyne 7 years to overcome the problem of the F-1 engine's resistance to high frequency vibrations.

During the second unmanned flight of the Saturn-V-Apollo-6 complex, which started on April 4, 1968, longitudinal oscillations (the so-called POGO oscillations) with a frequency of ~ 5 Hz were unexpectedly detected in the time interval 105 - 140 seconds, those. during operation of the first stage remote control. The amplitude of oscillations of axial overload reached 0.6g in the Apollo 6 command module and 0.33g in the tail section of the launch vehicle, which exceeded the values ​​allowed in the United States for manned flights. After several months of intensive research, an elegant solution to provide longitudinal stability in this case was found, which consisted in the organization of a gas cushion filled with helium gas from the oxidizer tank pressurization system, (which acted as a pneumatic damper), in the cavity of the liquid oxygen pre-valve in the supply lines F-1 engines, which lowered the natural frequency of fluid oscillations from 5 to 2 Hz. That is, no special additional “anti-Pogo” devices, as had to be done on the R-7 and Titan-2 missiles, were developed and tested.

Aerospace Corporation previously conducted an independent analysis of longitudinal stability and agreed with the proposed solution to eliminate longitudinal vibrations. Its effectiveness was experimentally confirmed during ground tests of the Saturn V in the “dynamic test tower” of the launch vehicle at the Marshall Center, which allowed von Braun and company to make the bold decision to conduct the next flight test of the system, but in a manned version ( "Apollo 8").

Appointed as the first director of the Space Flight Center. Marshall, Wernher von Braun controlled 40% of NASA's multi-billion dollar budget.

A unique experimental base was created, which became the "greatest national asset" of the United States.

Wernher von Braun against the backdrop of the Saturn 5 rocket

It took five years to create this base: about three years for planning and about two years for construction.

The main test benches include:

- a group of stands for firing tests of liquid-propellant rocket engines with a thrust of up to 700 tons at Edwards Air Force Base;

- a group of Rocketdine stands in Santa Susan for firing tests of J-2 engines;

- a bench for frequency testing of Saturn-V rockets in a suspended state.

The Americans have introduced a technique for improving the reliability of the operation of stage propulsion systems, which provides for firing bench tests of stages and the delivery of propulsion units for final assembly without reassembly. The implementation of this approach required huge funds from the NASA budget, but it fully justified itself.

- two twin stands for pre-flight fire tests of the first and second stages of the Saturn-V launch vehicle on the territory of the NASA complex in Mississippi;

- a set of stands for pre-flight fire tests of the third stage at a test base in Sacramento;

- complex No. 39 at Cape Canaveral, where the Saturn-V-Apollo complex was assembled in a vertical assembly building and transported together with the launch platform in a vertical position to the launch stand.

Particular importance in the "lunar" program is given to improving the reliability of all components of the Saturn-V-Apollo complex.

In June 1962, von Braun, after many discussions, favored the lunar rendezvous scheme (SSO) proposed by engineer John Houbolt of the Lutheran Research Center. Langley. Although earlier Brown adhered to the flight scheme proposed by him with a meeting in a geocentric orbit (VGO). “The WSO scheme gives the greatest confidence in the successful completion of a 10-year flight,” said von Braun. This decision of Brown, with his enormous authority, seemed surprising, but clearly demonstrated his ability to put the interests of the cause ahead of personal ambitions. (As the researchers rightly point out, this could not have happened in the USSR).

In 1962, the basic design of the lunar spacecraft was completed. Responsibility for the design of the Saturn-V launch vehicle was assigned to Wernher von Braun and his team from the Marshall Center. NASA signed contracts for the manufacture of the first stage with Boeing, the second with North American Aviation, and the third with Douglas.

In September 1963, George Muller became NASA's new head of manned spaceflight. He immediately instructed to make a tough and objective analysis of the status of the Saturn V-Apollo program and, most importantly, a realistic assessment of the date of the first landing of astronauts on the moon. It turned out that we can talk about the end of 1971. Müller demanded a radical change in plans in order to speed up the work. In preparation for the flight to the Moon, Brown's team was going to work out each of the Saturn-V stages individually before putting them together for final testing. Muller made an important decision - to test the first stage not with mock-ups, but with real upper stages, which will give an opportunity to buy time and fly to the moon before the end of the decade. Once again, Brown agreed, setting aside his original Saturn V plan.

Kennedy and von Braun

On January 16, 1963, President Kennedy visited the Launch Control Center at Cape Canaveral to review the progress of the Lunar program. Wernher von Braun also came to this center to demonstrate to the president Saturn-I and models of equipment for the lunar spacecraft. What he saw made a strong impression on Kennedy, but on November 20, 1963, the Senate cut NASA's budget by $612 million. On November 21, Kennedy went on a trip to Texas, and one of the purposes of the trip was to increase support for his "lunar" initiative. And on November 22, shots rang out in Dallas. There were fears within NASA that the assassination of the President could lead to the closure of the Saturn-Apollo program. But Lyndon Johnson, who became Kennedy's successor as president, turned out to be a worthy successor to his predecessor's work. In the meantime, the first suborbital flights of American astronauts under the Mercury project took place. Von Braun developed a very good relationship with the astronauts, who respected and admired him.

In 1967, an American tragedy happened - at Cape Canaveral, the crew of the first Apollo spacecraft - Chaffee, White, Grissom - died due to a fire in a capsule filled with oxygen. This catastrophe delayed the implementation of the Lunar program for 2 years. In 1968, Americans experienced events that distracted the public from space affairs. This is the Vietnam War, and the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The youth of the United States en masse were fond of sex, drugs and rock music.

Against all odds, the Saturn-Apollo program moved forward quickly. 1969 was the year of the successful landing of astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin on the Moon and their safe return to Earth.

In Huntsville, after the successful flight of the Saturn V-Apollo 11 system to the moon, the townspeople carried von Braun through the city streets in their arms. August 13, 1969 - a parade on Broadway in New York, a presidential dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles for 1,440 guests, including von Braun and his wife Maria.

After the completion of the Saturn-Apollo program, von Braun outlined a broad and far-reaching space program that included the completion of lunar exploration, the launch of remote sensing satellites, a reusable spacecraft, stations in low Earth orbit and a manned expedition to Mars, and prepared an article on this topic. for Readers' Digest about the new cosmic plan, however, it was never published.

NASA's new administrator, Thomas Paine, the same one who proposed canceling the last four moon missions to save $6 billion, understood and saw that the center of them. Marshall has fulfilled its mission and does not have a portfolio of significant projects for the future, and its director could either be left without significant business in Huntsville or help set NASA's future course at headquarters in Washington.

Payne invited von Braun to join NASA in planning future US space programs. In February 1970, von Braun started a new job. In March 1970, President Nixon supported the least expensive ($5.1 billion) option for the future space program - the creation of a shuttle, causing deep disappointment of the management and all NASA employees (the actual cost of this project amounted to $10 billion). Von Braun considered the chosen design option for the Space Shuttle dangerous - solid fuel rockets were never used as boosters, there was no crew emergency evacuation system. And, as the Challenger disaster showed, he was right.

Thomas Paine announced his resignation in 1970. Von Braun lost his most powerful ally. As one of his German colleagues noted: “From that day on, von Braun became not himself. He could be seen wandering alone through the long corridors.

The expedition to Mars was generally postponed indefinitely.

Full of plans and ideas, von Braun understood that his career in large-scale rocket and space technology was over, but did not give up.

As Bob Dylan sang in his famous song - "times - they change." Having won the lunar race, the American public lost interest in space projects. The Vietnam War required large expenditures, and there was a recession in the economy.

On June 30, 1972, 60-year-old von Braun left NASA and accepted an invitation from his friend Edd Uhl, president of Fairchild Industries Corporation, a small private aerospace firm, to take the position of executive vice president of research and development. He was entrusted with strategic planning for the future of the corporation. His new employees treated von Braun with great respect. At this time, Brown began to have health problems.

The last flight to the moon took place in 1972, the thirteenth and last. "Saturn - V" launched the manned space station "Skylab" into orbit, interchangeable crews (3 × 3) were delivered to the station of the Brownian launch vehicle "Saturn - ІB".

In the summer of 1973, Brown was diagnosed with a malignant kidney tumor. He had a kidney removed and a course of radiation therapy. Von Braun managed to win another victory, this time over a terrible disease, and return to work, but not for long. At that time, the main project of von Braun was the project of an applied technological satellite (PTS) - a powerful repeater that provides reception of television programs using inexpensive equipment. In 1974, PTS was launched into geostationary orbit over India to deliver primarily educational programs to 2,700 villages. Attempts by von Braun and the company's management to sell this technology elsewhere were unsuccessful.

After a 40-year break, von Braun began to fly gliders and airplanes again, received a license to fly a seaplane. As a glider pilot von Braun received the "Silver Badge", rising to a height of 3353 m above the Adirondacks.

In 1975, von Braun had a relapse of the disease - tumor cells were found in the intestines, and a second operation followed, courses of chemotherapy and blood transfusions, but this time the disease did not recede.

Von Braun resigned on December 31, 1976, and in early 1977 President Gerald Ford awarded Wernher von Braun the National Medal of Science, which had been presented to him at the hospital by his former boss, Edd Uhl, on behalf of the White House. Von Braun was touched by this recognition of his services to the United States.

In the last days of von Braun's life, his family gathered in a hospital in Alexandria (Virginia) - his wife Maria, daughters Iris and Margrit, son Peter. The heart of the great rocket scientist stopped beating on June 16, 1977. They buried him in Alexandria. In the same year, Maria von Braun passed away. Their family life was called cloudless. When von Braun's 100th birthday was celebrated in Huntsville, his daughter Margrit said the phrase: "No matter how things turned out at work, my father spent all Sundays with his family." In the Alexandria hospital, von Braun was visited by Neil Armstrong, the man who first set foot on the moon. His rehearsed impromptu "This is a small step for a man, but a big leap for mankind" went down in history, like Gagarin's "Let's go!". Von Braun told Armstrong, “Statistically, my prospect of survival is rather pale. Although you know, my misfortune has one positive side - now I am with my wife and children all the time. ”

Von Braun was a person of extremely diverse interests, who loved life in all its manifestations. In America, he was fond of flying and water sports - water skiing, diving; personally drove cars and boats, traveled a lot, incl. to Antarctica, and has always been an optimist. He knew how to make friends and take care of his loved ones. All his life he respected his teacher, Hermann Oberth, who was 8 years older and outlived his most talented student by 12 years. He contrived to arrange for Oberth to visit the Peenemünde security facility, where Brown proudly showed him the A-4 rocket. In the difficult post-war years, von Braun sent food parcels to Oberth in Germany. He invited Aubert to the historic launch of Apollo 11 to the moon.

In this article, the phrase "von Braun's team" is repeatedly used. Not being able to name the composition of the team - it is more than a hundred people, we will indicate at least a few bright names. All of them were not only associates, but also friends of Wernher von Braun. This is Eberhard Res, for 30 years - von Braun's deputy for research and development (in our terminology), who replaced von Braun as director of the Center. Marshal; Kurt Debus, who led the A-4 test launches and all launches to the Moon, director of the Center. J. Kennedy; Ernst Shtuhlinger, scientist, director of the research department of the Center. Marshall, ion propulsion specialist; Arthur Rudolf - one of the first to join the team, in 1933, director of the Mittelwerk plant, head of the Saturn-V program at the Center
them. Marshall.

In order to better understand the working conditions of astronauts, von Braun worked in a space suit in a hydroweightlessness pool and tested weightlessness in a special aircraft; helped young American astronauts in the construction of the observatory, participated in the congresses of the International Astronautical Federation, where he also met with Soviet cosmonauts. And in parallel, von Braun was always busy writing articles and books, mostly popular science. The list of his published works is very large, within the framework of the article we will name only a few significant, in our opinion, positions.

In 1952-1953. von Braun publishes a series of "space" articles in Colliers: "Crossing the Last Frontier", "Man on the Moon: The Journey", "Moon Explorer", "Crash" and co-authored with Ryan "Little Space Station", "Can We get to Mars?

The titles of the articles themselves say what Wernher von Braun thought and dreamed about. At the same time, his “Martian Project” was published in book form (in 1952 in Germany, in 1953 in the USA), the books “Beyond the Space Frontier” (1952), “Conquest of the Moon” (1953 ), "Exploring Mars" (with Willie Lay, 1956). In 1956, Brown published the article "Memories of German Rockets" in the journal of the British Interplanetary Society, in 1958 - a carefully filtered article "Space Man: The Story of My Life" (von Braun's story about himself, recorded by C. Mitchell and published in three rooms of the American Weekly).

In 1966, von Braun, in collaboration with his friend Frederick Ordway III, published the encyclopedia "History of rockets and space travel", reprinted in 1975. The above titles are only individual characteristic positions from an extensive list of his works. So, for example, in only one magazine - "Popular Science" - von Braun published 73 articles. Von Braun's diaries, which he kept from May 1958 to March 1970, have also been published. In 2007, the book The Voice of Wernher von Braun, a collection of his speeches throughout his career, was published in Toronto. He was an excellent lobbyist for his projects and for rocket and space technology in general. Von Braun wrote articles and books in German and English, which were translated in many countries. Only, as far as the author knows, there are no translations into Russian - unfortunately. I am sure that the selected works of Wernher von Braun would find a Russian-speaking reader.

More than ten universities in the US and Germany have awarded him the honorary title of professor.

Von Braun was appreciated by US presidents - Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford.

A research institute and a center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, streets in German cities (Bonn, Mannheim, Mainz and smaller cities), an avenue in New York are named after Wernher von Braun.

A crater on the Moon is named after him, where the giant Saturn-5 rocket (or is it Saturn-V?) delivered the first Earthlings.

His lunar American dream came true, but it was not only von Braun's personal dream - the dream of all mankind came true.

P.S. Von Braun's top manager's creed

This is how von Braun stated his creed in a report at the All-American Conference on Organization and Management in the Age of Scientific and Technological Progress, September 4-7, 1962. held in Seattle.

1. Make people work hard and keep them happy.

2. Organize work in such a way that none of the staff lose their face, express dissatisfaction, or quit.

3. Bring calm to the minds of employees who are plagued by routine, dryness of relationships, dissuade those who are convinced that management is not connected with collective thought.

4. Achieve maximum productivity of the team and at the same time provide a sense of job satisfaction, exclude the possibility of conflicts.

5. Management in itself is not a problem. Problems arise when people do not clearly understand their tasks and methods for solving them.

6. Discussion about organization and management can lead to a dead end. Management technique must be considered taking into account the specific people who are to be managed.

7. The decision maker must respond to facts and requests promptly.

Received May 30, 2012

Reviewer: cand. tech. Sciences S.V. Tarasov, Institute of Transport Systems and Technologies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine.

TWO LIVES AND TWO ROCKETS OF WERNER VON BRAUNT (1912-1977).
UNTIL 100 RICHCHIA FROM BIRTHDAY

V.A. Zadontsev

The article presents materials, including small ones, about the life and work of Wernher von Braun in Germany in the United States, the creator of the first in the world of long-range ballistic missiles from the RRD - A-4 (V-2) and the important launch vehicle "Saturn-V ”, which corrected the American astronauts for the month. The role of von Braun in the development of RRDs of these missiles, including the F-1 and J-2, the built-up infrastructure of the missile chamber in Germany and the United States, in the promotion of space benefits, is shown. space complexes.

Key words: Wernher von Braun, Hermann Oberth, rocket, RRD. Peenemünde, V-2, Center im. Marshall, Saturn-V, engines F-1, J-2.

TWO LIVES AND TWO ROCKETS OF WERNER VON BRAUN (1912-1977).
TO THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH

V.A. Zadontsev

The article presents information, including little-known facts, about Wernher's Von Braun life and work in
Germany and the United States as a creator of the world "s first ballistic long-range missile with a liquid-propellant rocket engine - A-4 (V-2) and heavy launch vehicle Saturn-V, delivered the American astronauts to the Moon . Reflected von Braun"s role in the development of liquid-propellant rocket engine for these missiles, including the F-1 and J-2, building infrastructure of the industry in Germany and the United States, in promoting space flights, shows some features of von Braun as a person and as a chief designer of rocket and missile and space systems.

Key words: Wernher Von Braun, Hermann Oberth, rocket, liquid-propellant rocket engine, Peenemünde, V-2, Marshall's Center, Saturn-V, engines F-1, J-2.

Zadontsev Vladimir Antonovich– Dr. tech. Sciences, Professor, Chief Researcher of the Institute of Transport Systems and Technologies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine.

[*2] - Shot from Vladimir Platonov's documentary "Yangel". 1 series. Ustinov landing. Shown on Channel 9 of Dnepropetrovsk.

At the age of 20, to be honest, I was still an unintelligent youth and did not realize the significance of a change in political leadership. My father was naturally wiser. Under President Hindenburg, he held a post corresponding to the post of Minister of Agriculture, but with the advent of Hitler to power, his father resigned. He told me more than once that the new policy would end in tragedy not only for the people of Germany, but also for many other peoples. However, I was fanatically fascinated by rocket science and let its horrifying predictions fall on deaf ears.

(Wernher von Braun)

Like other celebrities, Wernher von Braun was careful to keep his past out of the American public. One could read about his life in many articles. Von Braun was always willing to cooperate with those who described his life, and almost always reviewed the final versions of his biography in order to supposedly eliminate inaccuracies in the manuscripts. Several times he himself told about his past. If necessary, he could distort the real facts, replacing them with fiction. Why not?

When he arrived in America, everything that the Americans managed to find out about him came from the lips of von Braun himself, his friends and colleagues, and also followed from official documents that American intelligence agencies managed to find in Germany. But many, many facts from the life of von Braun were hidden in the fog of obscurity, and the reason for this was that many archival documents burned down during fires in Germany or were deliberately destroyed by the Nazis. If any documents still existed, then most likely they were in the Soviet zone of occupation and therefore were not available to US army officials. But the most intriguing story about Wernher von Braun's life before he set foot on American soil is, of course, not what he said or composed about his past, but what von Braun kept silent about.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, immigrants were ordinary people who came to work, peasants who dreamed of grabbing a decent piece of land, or blacks sold into slavery. Only a few of them were aristocrats who, unable to withstand the blows of fate, went to seek their happiness across the ocean. Wernher von Braun belonged to this group.

The family name of von Braun's ancestors came from the knight Henimanus De Bruno, who lived in the Bavarian town of Branau in 1285. Subsequently, over the centuries, the spelling of Bruno's surname changed, and the latter was written in German as Brunowe, Bronav, de Bronne, Brawnaw, and finally turned into modern - Braun. The descendants of the knight De Bruno were landlords for several centuries and owned large estates in Silesia and East Prussia. Wernher von Braun's father, Magnus Alexander Maximilian von Braun (1878–1972), held the title of baron and, continuing the family tradition, was a large landowner and had estates in both East Prussia and Silesia.

Wernher von Braun's mother, nee Emmy von Quistorp (1886-1959), could not boast of such an ancient pedigree as her husband. Nevertheless, the Quistorp family was as famous in Germany as the Brown family. The Quistorp family originated from Sweden, but for several centuries representatives of this family lived in Pomerania and Mecklenburg. In Germany, many of the Quistorps were known as Lutheran ministers, as university professors, as bankers, and as large landowners.

Baron Magnus von Braun married Emmy von Quistorp in 1910. A year later, Emmy gave her husband her first son, Sigismund. A year later, on March 23, 1912, Emmy gave birth in Wirsitz, in the province of Posen, to her second son, Werner Magnus Maximilian von Braun. In 1919, the third son, Magnus, appeared in the Brown family.

Werner was born two years before the outbreak of World War I. At that time, Baron von Braun held a high position in the Landrat of the province of Posen. World War I was a disaster for both Germany and the von Braun family. Germany, having been defeated in the war, was forced to give the territory of the province of Posen to Poland, to which this territory had previously belonged. The Browns have lost their lands.

After the war, the von Braun family settled on their estate in the County of Löwenberg in Silesia. Living far from the German capital of Berlin, the Browns were protected from the political and economic upheavals that hit many German cities in the 1920s. Within a decade after the end of the First World War, Baron von Braun managed to become famous in German political circles and take the post of Minister of Agriculture.

The young Wernher von Braun's interest in science and technology was awakened on the day of his confirmation in the Lutheran church. On this day, Emmy gave her son a telescope. The rest, according to Werner himself, was already an inevitable consequence of this gift. “So, I became an amateur astronomer, and this aroused in me an extraordinary interest in the universe. I began to dream of building a device that would put a man on the moon." This device, of course, could only be a rocket.

Wernher von Braun got into the world of rocket science thanks to two of his compatriots - Max Vallier and Fritz von Opel, who dreamed of fame and were passionate about the idea of ​​conquering space. Vallière wrote a book about space travel and rockets. Opel was engaged in the design of cars at that time, but had not yet managed to become famous in this field. Vallière brought in Opel as a partner to finance his rocket experiments. In the mid-1920s, solid-propellant or "powder" rockets were already used as flares on ships. Vallière and Opel bought several of these missiles and began to install them on racing cars and snowmobiles for driving on ice. Thanks to the use of rockets, Opel and Vallière managed to break the existing speed records. As a result, they managed to make an excellent advertisement for Opel cars and vehicles for future space travel, which Vallier wrote about in his book.

When the young Werner learned of the successes of Vallière and Opel, he went to Berlin and bought half a dozen flares there. He tied the rockets to a small van, in which the von Braun family sometimes traveled along the coast, and set off on this transport to one of the main Berlin streets - to the Tiergarten Allee. There, he set fire to the fuses connected to the solid fuel in the rockets, or rather, gunpowder, and the van he had upgraded rushed forward down the street, leaving fiery flames escaping from the rockets. Passers-by were horrified by what they saw and shied away in all directions. Werner himself only had time to look after his offspring. Fortunately, no passers-by were hurt, and the police, who initially arrested the young inventor, soon released him, advising the Minister of Agriculture to keep his offspring under house arrest.

Thanks to his father's wealth and nobility, young Werner received an excellent education. Parents sent Brown to a prestigious Berlin gymnasium, in which teaching was conducted in French. Werner quickly and easily mastered French. Apparently, he inherited the ability for languages ​​from his mother. However, things were not going well with mathematics and physics. Baron von Braun did not hide his dissatisfaction with his son's poor grades in these subjects and assigned Werner to the Hermann Leitz boarding school, located near Weimar. This educational institution was famous for its advanced teaching methods, almost friendly relations between students and teachers and a very rich curriculum.

Being in this unusual educational institution, Werner often looked through popular scientific astronomical magazines. In one of them, he saw an advertisement for a new book called "The Path to the Planets." (Wernher von Braun, recalling this, seems to have made an inaccuracy. In fact, this book was called "The Path to Space Travel" and was published in 1929.) Its author was von Braun's compatriot - a certain Hermann Oberth. Under the advertising text were placed drawings depicting a giant rocket and the moon. Werner ordered this book, hoping that in it he would find a lot of interesting information about travel in interplanetary space. When the book was finally in his hands, he eagerly began to turn page after page, and what he saw simply shocked him. The pages of the book were dotted with complex mathematical calculations and filled with many tables with numbers. Werner realized that without a serious study of mathematics and physics, he would never understand how to conquer space. And he plunged headlong into the study of these disciplines. As a result, he began to get excellent grades in physics and mathematics and successfully passed his final exams.

In the spring of 1930, Werner became a student at the Polytechnic School in Charlottenburg. In the late 1920s, throughout Germany, and in its capital in particular, many young people were fascinated by the idea of ​​building rockets for space travel. Rocket enthusiasts organized the Space Travel Society, which they believed was supposed to help them realize their dream. In Berlin, Werner became an active member of this society. There he met the young writer Willy Ley. Later, Ley became the first author of the history of German rocket science. In one of his books, he quite accurately described Wernher von Braun when he was still at the Polytechnic School. “Outwardly, he was an excellent example of the type of people who were later called by the Nazis the “Aryan Nordic” type. He had blue eyes and blond hair, and one of my relatives found a striking resemblance between Wernher von Braun and the eminent English writer Oscar Wilde, or rather the famous photograph of the latter by Lord Alfred Douglas. Wernher von Braun's manners were impeccable and appear to have been the result of a strict family upbringing."

Willy Ley knew everyone in Germany who was seriously interested in rocket science. It was he who introduced Werner to the patriarch of German rocket science, Hermann Oberth, the author of the book that made such a strong impression on von Braun in his last year at boarding school. Oberth was in Berlin in those years, where he was going to test the rocket engine he had designed. Werner was apparently introduced to Oberth by telephone, and von Braun did not fail to take advantage of this opportunity to get closer to realizing his dream.

“I am still studying at the Polytechnic School,” Werner said modestly to Oberth, “and I can offer you nothing but my free time and enthusiasm, but can I be of any help to you?”

Oberth received money for the implementation of his ideas and for testing from his like-minded people, adding to these funds his savings, and therefore he also decided not to miss this opportunity. Enthusiast-assistant, of course, would be useful to him. "Okay, come see me right now," said Oberth, and from that day on became von Braun's first rocket science teacher.

Hermann Oberth was born in 1894 in Transylvania, in a remote corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Following in his father's footsteps, he first studied medicine at the University of Munich, but the First World War interrupted his studies and he went with a field hospital to the front lines. After what Herman had to see at the front, he lost interest in medicine forever. In addition, with the end of the war, Transylvania passed to Romania - the enemy of Germany in this war, and Oberth automatically turned into an enemy, of course, not for German culture or science, but for Germany as a whole. However, he returned to continue his studies in physics and mathematics. As the topic of his doctoral dissertation, Oberth chose theoretical studies concerning rockets as vehicles for space travel. This topic fascinated him from an early age. He failed to defend his dissertation at the University of Heidelberg, and, most likely, the reason for this was not only the lack of imagination of university professors, but also the fallacy of some of the conclusions in Oberth's dissertation.

Oberth, it would seem, should have been very upset that he did not achieve the desired recognition in German scientific circles, but he did not abandon his ideas. At his own expense, he published a dissertation work in the form of a book entitled "Rocket in interplanetary space." This little book became surprisingly popular, and soon Oberth had a whole group of students who were ready to create rockets according to the design of their teacher. These people formed the backbone of the Space Travel Society. The attention that Oberth finally won outside the scientific community inspired him, and in 1929 an enlarged and expanded edition of his book was published already under the title "The Path to Space Travel". It was this book that attracted the attention of the young von Braun.

In the same 1929, Oberth asked for a leave at his own expense from the director of the secondary school where he taught physics and mathematics, and went to Berlin, where he found himself in a very strange company in the person of one of the most famous film producers in Germany, Fritz Lang. He created the film "Girl on the Moon" about traveling to the moon in a rocket. To make his film more convincing, Lang brought in Oberth and Willie Ley as technical consultants. In addition, the director persuaded Oberth to design a rocket and launch it on October 15, 1929 - the day the film premiered. "Girl in the Moon" was a huge success, but Oberth never completed work on the creation of the rocket. He was a brilliant theoretician, but he clearly lacked practical knowledge to create a spacecraft.

In 1930, Oberth returned to Berlin to try and build and test a liquid-propellant rocket. Oberth's assistants in this matter were several members of the Space Travel Society, including Wernher von Braun. During these years, Oberth hatched grandiose plans born while working with Lang. He designed a simple rocket engine and named his brainchild "Kegelduese" ("Conical jet"). Together with his assistants, Oberth made great strides and tested the new engine at the proving ground. The tests were funded by the Institute of Chemistry and Technology (the same institution as the National Bureau of Standards in the United States). When the tests were completed, Oberth received a certificate certifying the quality and efficiency of his engine - the first liquid-fuel engine created in Germany. However, despite the success achieved, Oberth soon found himself again without financial support. He returned to Romania, where he continued teaching at the school. The designer left further improvement of his offspring to his students from the Space Travel Society, and above all he hoped for the talent of Wernher von Braun.

Young rocket science enthusiasts were already approaching the realization of their dreams under the guidance of a military pilot and participant in the First World War, engineer Rudolf Nebel. Nebel rented a former military warehouse located in the vicinity of Berlin, north of the capital. This warehouse was to become the base for the design and testing of rockets created by members of the Space Travel Society. At the end of September 1930, rocket science enthusiasts moved into this building and strengthened the sign "Berlin rocket launcher" above the entrance.

Wernher von Braun, Rudolf Nebel and Willy Ley, together with other members of the society, designed some of the first rocket prototypes and tested them on a site located next to the new production building. These rockets, assembled from scrap metal, were simple in design and far from perfect. Only in a few cases was it possible to ensure that the missiles flew along the intended trajectory. The missile tests attracted the attention not only of the people of Berlin, local fire departments and the press, but also of German army officials.

For the German army, the Reichswehr, rockets were of great interest also because the Treaty of Versailles, which limited the number of German weapons, did not mention rockets at all. Moreover, combat missiles would become more effective weapons than conventional artillery.

In the spring of 1932, several plainclothes army officers visited the amateur rocket site to see what the young rocket designers had achieved. The visitors were amazed by what they saw, and even more so by the fact that all the work on the creation of rockets was carried out with virtually no financial support. Army officials were disappointed only by the frivolous attitude of designers to documentation relating to both the new developments themselves and missile tests. In order to make sure that amateur enthusiasts were able to make a combat rocket, representatives of the Reichswehr promised to pay designers 1360 marks if they could make a prototype of a combat rocket and launch it from one of the artillery ranges. In addition, in the agreement between the army and the "Society" it was said that in the event of a successful launch of a military rocket, the Reichswehr promised to provide financial support to the "Society" in further developments.

On an early August morning in 1932, Wernher von Braun, Rudolf Nebel and their colleague Klaus Riedel set off with their hopes and a new rocket to an artillery range south of Berlin. There they were met by the captain of the Reichswehr, Walter Dornberger, who was entrusted with overseeing the development of missiles for the German army. The engine of the new rocket was placed in its bow, and the rear of the rocket with narrow fuel cylinders resembled a long cane. After launch, the rocket rose to a height of about 30 m, then rolled over, sharply lowered its height to ten meters and flew horizontally until it crashed into the tops of the pines of the nearest forest. The test of the new rocket disappointed both its designers and the Reichswehr representatives who were present at the test site. Army officials have not received a compelling reason to financially support the developers.

The young Wernher von Braun did not resign himself to this failure. He collected data on missile tests and developments created by members of the "Society", and went to Colonel Karl Becker, who at that time headed the Reichswehr's ballistics and weapons department. Becker greeted Brown quite warmly and, after listening to all the proposals of the young designer, offered the development team a new deal. The army was ready to provide them with financial support if they agreed to continue their work in strict secrecy. However, Rudolf Nebel, the most influential member of the "Society", began to object to this condition. He clearly did not want their creative team to turn into a purely army unit.

Upon learning of this, Becker offered von Braun another option: to continue his scientific work at the University of Berlin at the expense of funds allocated by the Reichswehr until receiving a bachelor's degree. Becker himself was a professor at this university. At the same time, the topic of von Braun's scientific work was to be the study of liquid-fuel rocket engines. Becker's faith in Wernher von Braun's capabilities and abilities was also reinforced by the fact that Werner's father, Baron von Braun, was not only a minister in the Weimar Republic, but also a friend of Becker.

Wernher von Braun carried out experimental research on the topic of his doctoral dissertation at the military research laboratory in Kummersdorf-West. Werner reported the results of these studies on October 1, 1932. Then he was only 20 years old. After this report, he was immediately awarded a bachelor's degree. Shortly after this event, Wernher von Braun became close to the mechanical engineer Heinrich Groynow and another rocket science enthusiast, Walter Riedel, namesake of Klaus Riedel. This trio worked under the leadership of Walter Dornberger, who had recently received the rank of colonel. Soon, Dornberger entrusted the technical management of the project to Wernher von Braun, leaving himself only purely administrative functions.

Already in the United States, Wernher von Braun explained the reasons for the fact that he and his associates began to work for the Nazis:

We needed money for our experiments, and the German army was ready to help us. We decided to take advantage of this opportunity without thinking at all about the consequences of our cooperation with the Reichswehr. It should also be noted that in 1932 the idea of ​​another world war looked absurd. The Nazis were not yet in power, and we had no reason to assume that what we were doing would be used against humanity in the future. We were all fascinated by only one thing - the exploration of outer space. And our main concern was to get as much as possible from the Golden Calf, which in those years seemed to us the German army.

Walter Dornberger was the second and perhaps the most influential of Wernher von Braun's teachers. Dornberger was a career army officer. He served in the German artillery during the First World War. Shortly before the 1918 armistice, he was taken prisoner and spent two years in a POW camp in France. After his release, he temporarily left the army to complete his bachelor's and master's degrees. After that, he returned to the Reichswehr again. He was assigned to the ballistics department and instructed to oversee the development of missiles for military purposes. Colonel Dornberger was then 37 years old. This man of medium height, always clean-shaven, with neatly combed dark brown hair, was distinguished by self-confidence and his rightness, as well as decisiveness in actions and deeds. Undoubtedly, it was these qualities that helped him make a military career.

While von Braun, Dornberger and their small group were developing the first and, by today's estimates, rather primitive rocket engines, the German political landscape underwent a catastrophic change. Political chaos and economic depression have not released Germany from their tenacious embrace since the end of the First World War. Many Germans believed that their country needed a strong government capable of rallying the German nation and returning Germany to its former glory. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and the Germans were in power. In March, the people of Germany handed over control of the Reichstag to the Nazis.

In the next 12 years, according to friends and colleagues of Wernher von Braun and according to autobiographical articles, he was engaged in the design of rockets with the sole purpose of creating spaceships. Von Braun considered the creation of combat missiles only as a means to finance his space projects. From the articles of von Braun himself and the published memoirs of his friends and associates, it follows that the brilliant rocket designer was completely naive in a field of politics that interested him little. It was not until the last years of World War II that von Braun became embroiled in the dirty political adventure of the Third Reich.

In fact, von Braun's interest in space travel and his work for the Nazis were not mutually exclusive. In early 1930s Germany, in order to finance his space projects, von Braun had no choice but to build rocket weapons. Moreover, if the Nazis supported space projects, it was only because they considered the launch of a spaceship with a man on board another confirmation of the exceptional role of Germany in the history of mankind. That is why the Nazi authorities in Nazi Germany became a sponsor of Wernher von Braun's space programs.

All rockets created by von Braun and Dornberger for the German army embodied the entire amount of knowledge about spacecraft and systems that had been accumulated by German scientists and engineers by that time.

Combat missiles in the documents were called "aggregates". By mid-1933, a group led by Dornberger and von Braun began work on the creation of "Unit-1" (or A-1). The A-1 rocket looked like an artillery shell. Its diameter did not exceed 30 cm, and its length was about one and a half meters. This rocket had a liquid fuel engine that provided a thrust force of 260 kg. The stability of the flight trajectory was ensured using a gyroscope weighing about 34 kg, placed in the nose of the device. The A-1 rocket was ready for launch at the end of 1933. Literally a fraction of a second after starting the engine, the A-1 rocket turned into a fireball and a pile of metal. This was due to a delay in the ignition timing in the engine.

Von Braun and Dornberger decided not to tempt fate and abandoned the creation of a second A-1 rocket. Instead, they started working on a modernized version of the A-1, the A-2 rocket. She had the same dimensions and engine as her predecessor, but the gyroscopic system was not located in the bow, but in the middle of the rocket body, between the tanks with fuel and liquid oxygen.

While working on the A-2, von Braun completed his doctoral dissertation and sent the manuscript to the University of Berlin. His dissertation work "Design, theoretical and experimental developments for solving the problem of creating a rocket on liquid fuel" was approved by the academic council of the university on July 27, 1934 and was immediately marked "Top Secret". It was published only after the end of the war. Thus, Wernher von Braun, at the age of 22, had already received his doctorate and fame in the scientific circles of Germany. The talent and determination of the scientist allowed him to become a leader in the field of rocket science not only in Germany, but throughout the world.

In December 1934, von Braun and Walter Dornberger finally met the expectations of their army sponsors and successfully launched two A-2 missiles at once, named Max and Moritz. Missile tests were carried out on the island of Borkum in the North Sea. Both missiles reached a target altitude of about 2–3 km above sea level.

In 1935, American rocket pioneer Robert Goddard was also building and testing liquid-propellant rockets. Goddard and von Braun were not familiar with each other's work, and therefore Goddard had to look for the technical solutions already found by von Braun on his own. Goddard succeeded in designing lighter and longer rockets. The American designer launched his first rocket on May 31, 1935 at the Roswell test site in New Mexico. This rocket reached a height of about 3 km, surpassing the achievement of von Braun.

Meanwhile, Wernher von Braun began work on the creation of the A-3 rocket. It had undoubted advantages over previous von Braun models and Goddard's rockets. The A-3 rocket was much larger than its predecessors and seemed huge at the time. It had a diameter of about a meter and a length of over 8 m. Fully fueled, it weighed over 600 kg, and its engine provided a thrust force of about 1200 kg. The targeting system of this missile was also different. The old von Braun missiles raced to the target along an unchanged, pre-calculated trajectory, while the A-3 had a complex guidance system that allowed the trajectory to change during the flight. It was the first guided missile.

After von Braun reported on the design of the A-3 rocket, the army officials who listened to his report immediately remembered that the launches of the A-2 series rockets were also successful, and realized that they would have to allocate millions of marks for new developments. The Luftwaffe, on the other hand, wanted to conclude a contract with von Braun to develop jet engines for fighter aircraft. As a result, Dornberger and von Braun received 6 million marks from the Wehrmacht and 5 million marks more from the Luftwaffe for the development of rockets and jet engines, as well as the construction of new production buildings and a test site in a remote corner of Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea.

With the receipt of funds, it remains only to draw up a work plan. The missile base at Peenemünde was to become the property of both the army and the Luftwaffe, with the latter having to finance all the costs of building communications and production buildings. Walter Dornberger took over the planning of the project as a whole. He was well aware that the army did not intend to finance developments that would find application in the distant future, but expected results from his people that would provide Germany with tactical superiority over the enemy in the near future. Dornberger drew up the specification and characteristics of a new type of combat missiles. The new rocket had to be powerful enough to deliver a ton of explosive over a distance of at least three hundred kilometers. It should fall less than a kilometer from its intended target. Such accuracy was twenty times greater than the accuracy of firing from long-range artillery pieces. The dimensions of the new rocket must be such that it can be transported by road, as well as by rail, and not only on open ground, but through various tunnels.

Wernher von Braun, together with Walter Riedel, one of the most talented and experienced designers, prepared sketches of the main components of the rocket. As conceived by the designers, it was supposed to have a length of about 14 m and a diameter of more than one and a half meters. Together with stabilizers located in the tail section of the rocket, its width should have been almost 5 m. speed of about 6000 km/h and have a range of about 300 km. The military named the new missile A-4. As for the A-3, which was also included in the development plan, this missile was to be used to test individual systems and components that make up the A-4 design. The draft specification for the A-4 also included descriptions and drawings of the production halls, launch pads, and other facilities at Peenemünde.

The construction of the missile base on Peenemünde progressed much faster than the creation of missiles. This desert peninsula is located in the northern part of the island of Usedom, the westernmost of the two large islands near the mouth of the Oder, off the coast of the Baltic Sea. Due to its remoteness from the mainland, Peenemünde was an ideal location for a secret missile base. The dense forests that cover the peninsula provided excellent camouflage for production buildings and launch sites. The army occupied the western part of the cape, and the Luftwaffe began to build its airfields in the northwest. Both parts of Peenemünde were subordinate to the General Staff and were called the "Army Experimental Station Peenemünde". The buildings intended for headquarters were one-two-story houses with gabled roofs with a very modest set of decorative elements both outside and inside. By May 1937, the first phase of construction was completed, and soon army officers and representatives of the Luftwaffe began to move into their new apartments.

Wernher von Braun was appointed technical director of the secret facility and held this post until the base on Peenemünde was turned into a pile of ruins after the bombing of the cape by British and American aircraft.

And up to this point, Peenemünde had been the perfect playground for this rocket prodigy. Von Braun and his people created there what amateur enthusiasts from the "Rocketdrome" could only dream of. Von Braun had his own small corps at his disposal, in which he and his team could devote hours to their favorite business, which seemed to them nothing more than an exciting game.

On Peenemünde there were excellent opportunities for rest and recuperation after long months of hard work. Even the grandfather of Wernher von Braun liked to hunt in these places, and the ingenious rocket designer also did not deny himself this pleasure. His partner was most often Walter Dornberger. On warm days one could plunge into the waves of the Baltic Sea. And in the evenings, after work, von Braun, with Dornberger and a few members of his team, used to relax in the officers' club, listening to all sorts of incredible stories in the style of the stories of Baron Munchausen.

On December 4, 1937, almost three years after the successful launches of the Max and Moritz twins of the A-2 series, Wernher von Braun announced that he was ready to launch the new A-3 rocket. One of the tiny islands ten kilometers north of Peenemünde, the island of Greifswalder Oye, was chosen as a launch pad. The first launch was unsuccessful. The rocket lifted off the launch pad and made a quarter turn around its axis. Under the pressure of a strong squally wind, a parachute opened, which was intended to return the device to the ground safe and sound. But then the rocket's motion got out of control and it fell into the sea. Wernher von Braun and Walter Dornberger analyzed this situation for several days and came to the conclusion that it was caused by the premature opening of the parachute. They removed the parachute from the next rocket and made another attempt. The second rocket repeated the trick of the first. The third rocket has already been launched not only without a parachute, but also on a calm day. She reached a height of about 800 m, and then, losing control, fell into the sea.

It was clear that some part of the structure was defective. After carefully studying it, von Braun and his assistants realized that the guidance system, which some major naval specialist had developed based on a gyrocompass, was to blame. Von Braun decided to create a new model instead of the A-3 - the A-5, which would differ from the A-3 only in a more advanced guidance system.

In early 1939, the Luftwaffe realized that its participation in the army's rocket program was quite expensive, and decided to go a different way. The Luftwaffe retained only its airfields, and the rest of the property and problems with missiles were ceded to the army. What came under the control of the army began to be called rather modestly - "Penemünde Army Unit".

March 23, 1939 was a truly great day for Wernher von Braun. On this day, he turned 27 years old, and for the first time he personally met with the Fuhrer - Adolf Hitler. The Fuhrer demanded that he be informed about the implementation of the missile program. The meeting took place, but not on the peninsula, but in Kummersdorf-West, just 30 km from the Reich Chancellery, located in the center of Berlin. And before that, Walter Dornberger, as an officer in charge of the development of liquid-fuel rockets, showed Hitler and those accompanying him samples of rocket engines that provide a thrust force of 250 and 800 kg. And then Wernher von Braun told the Fuhrer in detail about the device and the missile control system. As a visual aid, he used a sectional image of an A-3 rocket. After this short lecture, the Fuhrer was shown the A-5 rocket from the inside. To this end, the rocket body and stabilizers were previously removed. In conclusion, Dornberger told Hitler about the A-4 rocket, which should become the most powerful weapon in Germany.

After getting acquainted with the rockets, a dinner party took place, at the end of which the Fuhrer exclaimed: “All this is great!”

Walter Dornberger took Hitler's comment as an expression of pride in the achievements of German scientists in the field of rocket science, but perhaps Dornberger was too optimistic in thinking so. It is possible that the Fuhrer could not admire the rockets at all, but those vegetarian dishes that he was treated to during dinner.

Later, Dornberger expressed his surprise that Hitler was completely unimpressed by the roaring sounds of rocket engines, the complex designs of rockets, and the grandiose plans of the developers of new German weapons. But Hitler's skepticism was well founded. Dornberger and von Braun spent tens of millions of marks, but in the time that had passed since the launch of the A-2 rockets in December 1934, they had not carried out a single successful launch of the vehicles they had created.

On September 1, 1939, German troops, on the orders of the Fuhrer, invaded Poland. The Second World War began. Within a few weeks, Germany and its temporary ally - the USSR - divided the territory of Poland between them. England and France declared war on Germany, and soon other countries were drawn into the fighting.

Dornberger, von Braun and their team continued their work in October 1939. A year after the unsuccessful launch of the A-3, the A-5 rocket was ready. Its dimensions did not differ from the dimensions of the A-3: length - about 6 m, diameter - about 80 cm. The A-5 rocket had the same engine with a thrust force of about 130 kg, which ran on liquid fuel. However, the improvement of the guidance system and some other components led to an increase in its weight to 800 kg.

Three A-5 rocket prototypes were launched from Greifswalder-Oye. All three launches were successful. The missiles reached their intended trajectory after 45 seconds, and then made a soft landing on the sea by parachute, where they were picked up by warships.

After these impressive successes, nothing could stop the German army, Wernher von Braun and his team. Now they had a design on the basis of which it was possible to start creating the A-4 rocket, and the Third Reich received the planned world war. Now it seemed that funding for the creation of new missiles was secured.

However, Hitler thought otherwise. The military successes of Germany were obvious, and the Fuhrer believed that conventional weapons would be enough to successfully end the war. In February 1940, he froze all those projects for the development of new types of weapons, the implementation of which took more than a year. The German army continued to develop missiles at Cape Peenemünde, using funds from other, less promising projects. More than 4,000 highly skilled workers and engineers took part in this program.

The A-4 rocket was ready for a test launch only two and a half years later. The first guided missile of this type was launched from the 7th Peenemünde launch pad on June 13, 1942. Having risen to a height of several thousand meters, she quickly emerged from thick clouds and fell to the ground not far from the launch site.

The second A-4 missile was launched on 16 August. She majestically gained altitude, but there her guidance system failed. Having overcome the sound barrier, the rocket moved along a given trajectory for 45 seconds at an altitude of over 10,000 meters, and then exploded in the air. All hopes were now pinned on the launch of the third prototype.

The A-4 rocket, about 15 meters long and weighing 14 tons, stood in the center of the 7th launch pad, at the northernmost tip of Peenemünde. Walter Dornberger, his subordinates in military uniforms, Wernher von Braun and his engineers were a few kilometers to the south. They saw their offspring rise above the tops of the pines, and only a few seconds later they heard the roar of the engines. For 4.5 seconds, the rocket moved vertically upwards, then turned slightly to the east. After 22 seconds, she broke the sound barrier and continued to accelerate. Moving at an angle of 50 degrees to the Earth's surface, it gained altitude, leaving a white plume of condensed exhaust gases in the sky. After 58 seconds of flight, the access of fuel to the engine was blocked by radio. The missile at that moment was moving at a speed of over 6000 km / h along a given trajectory to a target located in the Baltic Sea, 200 km from Peenemünde. 5 minutes after launch, the rocket fell into the sea, leaving a bright green spot on the surface of the water, as it was filled with dye.

Wernher von Braun and Walter Dornberger drove by car to the launch site, and an impromptu banquet was held there a few hours later. Hermann Oberth, von Braun's first teacher in the field of rocket science, was also present at the celebration. Oberth managed to return to Germany again, but, unfortunately, only to make sure that his former student and protégé had surpassed him. Nevertheless, Oberth also received his share of congratulations and flattering remarks - statements addressed to the person who inspired von Braun to great achievements.

In the evening, an official celebration took place. Walter Dornberger addressed his subordinates with the following words: “We invaded space with this rocket of ours and were the first to use it as a bridge between two points on Earth. We have proven that rockets can be used to move through space. Now, besides land, sea and air, we have one more medium for movement - an endless empty space - an environment in which we can travel from continent to continent ... But while the war continues, our most important task is to quickly create a rocket, like a new one. type of weapon.

For the creation and successful testing of the A-4 rocket, Wernher von Braun was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st class.

A few years after the defeat of Nazi Germany, von Braun wrote: “The end of the history of the creation of the A-4 rocket was no longer as grandiose as the beginning of this outstanding project. Moreover, the end was tragic not only for those who controlled the launch of these missiles aimed at London and Antwerp, but also for their developers.

A month and a half after the successful launch of the first A-4 rocket, the course of the war began to change, clearly not in favor of Germany. In November 1942, the German 6th Army faced stubborn resistance from the Soviet troops near Stalingrad. On November 19, the Red Army launched a counteroffensive that, by the end of January 1943, changed the course of the war. Of the 330,000 soldiers and officers of the 6th Army, only 100,000 survived. All of them were taken prisoner. Only about 5 thousand German soldiers and officers returned to their homeland from the Siberian camps. After such huge losses, when many German families lost their fathers, brothers, sons and husbands, the people of Germany began to realize that the Third Reich would not last long and all of Germany would soon be subjected to massive bombardments by British and American aircraft, followed by an invasion of enemy troops into the country.

Unfortunately, the triumph that ended the flight of the A-4 on October 3, 1942 did not lead to new successes in the field of German rocket science. This type of rocket proved not to be a very reliable spacecraft, and A-4s often crashed on their return to Earth. Von Braun and his colleagues tried to correct these shortcomings. Walter Dornberger regularly knocked on the doorsteps of the Berlin offices in the hope of increasing funding to complete the project. Finally, he managed to draw the attention of government officials to this problem. In May 1943, Albert Speer, who held an important position in the Ministry of Armaments and War Industry, together with his advisers, witnessed the successful launch of the A-4 at Peenemünde. Two days after this event, Speer informed Dornberger that he had been promoted to the rank of major general. During the tests of the A-4, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler was also present at Peenemünde. It was he who suggested to Hitler to increase the priority of the development of rocket weapons.

Each successive defeat of the German army caused a fit of rage in Hitler, mixed with despair. Now he had no choice but to become an enthusiast of those projects that, on his orders, were frozen in the early 1940s, when he believed that the war had already been practically won. On July 7, 1943, Major General Dornberger received an order to inform the Fuhrer about the state of development of the A-4 missiles. Together with von Braun and Ernst Steinhoff, Dornberger went to East Prussia, to the town of Rastenburg, in the vicinity of which Hitler's headquarters, called the Wolf's Lair, was located.

This trinity with Peenemünde met with the Fuhrer in the assembly hall of the Wolf's Lair. At the meeting, along with Hitler, were Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the German General Staff, General Walter Buhle, Chief of the Armaments Department of the German Army, and Albert Speer, along with his adjutants and secretaries. They all took their seats in the front row, while Wernher von Braun took the stage. After the lights were turned off in the hall, a film showing the successful launch of the A-4 rocket nine months ago began. The film was accompanied by von Braun's commentary. Many details related to the production and launch of the rocket were shown - the building at the 7th test site, in which the rocket was assembled, transported to the launch site, engine static testing, mobile launch facility, installation of the rocket at the launch site and refueling it . In the event that the Fuhrer and those accompanying him were not impressed by the film, Brown and his colleagues were ready to repeat the launch of the A-4 into the skies of the Baltic.

Albert Speer described von Braun's performance and the impression made on the Fuhrer in these words: “Von Braun spoke confidently, without a hint of timidity. There was no hint of youthful enthusiasm in his voice. He stated his theory so clearly and understandably that from that day on Hitler became an admirer of the brilliant scientist.

When von Braun finished the presentation of a new type of weapon, Walter Dornberger gave some explanations about its production. The discussion between listeners and speakers was reduced to a question of whether the A-4 should be launched from mobile units or from a fixed underground bunker. Dornberger liked the first option more, but for some reason the Fuhrer preferred the second. It is clear that Hitler won this dispute, and he immediately ordered the construction of underground mines for missiles to begin. And Walter Dornberger was consoled by the fact that he received what he had long dreamed of - a high military rank.

After this historic meeting, Wernher von Braun was also awarded for services to the Third Reich. At the prompting of Dornberger, Albert Speer approached the Fuhrer with a proposal to confer on von Braun the title of titular professor. Such a title was not academic and was awarded as an honorary title by the head of state. Hitler, still under the impression of his new weapons, approved of this idea. He signed the necessary papers, and Speer had only to hold a formal awards ceremony.

After the rocket men were under the auspices of the Fuhrer, they were immediately interested in the intelligence of the countries at war with Germany, especially British intelligence. Western intelligence officers managed to get very disturbing information that in Germany, at a military base off the coast of the Baltic, tests of a new type of weapon have begun. With the help of aerial photographs taken from the board of the British reconnaissance aircraft "Mosquitos", it was possible to find out that the secret base is hidden in the forest on Cape Peenemünde. It was also possible to photograph several combat rockets, including the one that was soon used to strike at London. On the night of August 18-19, the RAF headquarters sent 497 Stirlings, Halifaxes and Lancasters to this place. This operation was authorized by Winston Churchill himself. As a result of the mass bombardment, it was supposed to destroy not only the missile base itself, but also all the scientists, engineers and workers who worked on the creation of missiles. And, of course, one of the main targets was the missiles themselves, which threatened primarily England. The air raid lasted 45 minutes, and after all the bombs were dropped, the cape was completely engulfed in fire. However, the British pilots did not succeed in completing the combat mission to the end. Most of the German scientists and engineers managed to hide in bomb shelters. Of the 4,000 German citizens who lived on Peenemünde, including family members of scientists, designers and other specialists, 178 people died. Also killed were 557 foreign workers, mostly Russians and Poles, whom the German authorities used mainly for auxiliary work. These unfortunates were locked up in their barracks in a special camp in the southern part of the Peenemünde base.

The British failed to carry out targeted bombing, and the destruction was not so strong. Churchill and the command of the British Air Force were extremely upset. Quite a few V-2 rockets that were in the process of being assembled did not receive any serious damage. However, the raids could be repeated, and Hitler ordered the production of missiles to be transferred to a secret underground factory in the Harz mountains in Central Germany. Hitler instructed Himmler to organize the laying of tunnels and the construction of production buildings. Soon the Reichsführer SS and chief of the Gestapo connected the Wehrmacht to this case, and entrusted Walter Dornberger to control the missile development program.

Wernher von Braun talked about how the Reichsfuehrer hurried him. In February 1944, Himmler called von Braun and invited him to the SS headquarters in Hochfeld, East Prussia. Brown recalls the trepidation with which he entered Himmler's office. There he saw "a genius of evil with a charming appearance and excellent manners, but ready to cut the throat of anyone who dares to stand in his way." These words of von Braun characterize the Reichsführer quite accurately. Himmler was indeed extremely polite to von Braun and resembled a modest village teacher, but this is precisely what caused the scientist's subconscious feeling of fear. “I hope you understand how important it is for us to have the A-4 missile,” Himmler said. - The whole German people hope that this wonderful weapon will allow the Wehrmacht to protect our country from its enemies ... As for you personally, I can imagine how tired you are of army staff rats with their bureaucratic squiggles. Why don't you go directly under my command? You certainly know that no one has such influence over the Fuhrer as I do, and therefore my support will be more effective for you than the efforts of all the generals of the Wehrmacht combined.

“Mr. Reichsführer,” Brown immediately replied, “I don’t see a better boss for myself than General Walter Dornberger. The fact that we do not always meet the deadlines is due more to technical problems than to bureaucratic red tape. The A-4 rocket is like a flower, and in order for it to bloom, it needs sunlight, the right amount of fertilizer, and a conscientious gardener. The remedy that you suggest is similar to liquid fresh manure. Such a fertilizer, of course, is very effective, but it may well destroy our tender plant.

Reading von Braun's notes about his meeting with Himmler, one is struck by the audacity of the outstanding scientist when talking to the Nazi leader, whose name alone struck terror into the hearts of millions of people on our planet. Many years after von Braun's story about this meeting, facts became known that raised doubts about the veracity of von Braun's story (see Chapter 3). Von Braun did not tell anyone about this audience, not even his friend and boss Walter Dornberger.

Three weeks later, von Braun was arrested by Gestapo agents. He and several of his subordinates, including his younger brother Magnus, were accused of treason against state interests. The Gestapo said that von Braun and his people put the dream of space flight above the important work of building a V-2 rocket for the Reich. The arrested were kept in the dungeons in Stettin for two weeks, until the intervention of Walter Dornberger and the intercession of Albert Speer opened the way for them to freedom.

Von Braun unwittingly became embroiled in a showdown between the Wehrmacht and the SS, and after his arrest, his reputation with the Nazis was shaken. Even after his release, many of the top Nazis were convinced that space exploration was a higher priority for him than serving the cause of National Socialism. But after the end of the war, the case when the Gestapo declared von Braun an enemy of the Third Reich became a lifeline for him.

There is a lot of mystery in the story of the arrest of von Braun and his colleagues. The Gestapo executioners usually did not stand on ceremony with the arrested, and even with the generals of the Wehrmacht. Usually they were tortured not only to force a confession, but also in order to obtain information about real subversive activities in the Third Reich. However, according to Gestapo reports, Brown and his men were treated very well in prison. There was no mention in these reports that the arrests of Wehrmacht officers or civil servants working on Peenemünde were the result of denunciations written by von Braun or any of his colleagues. From all this we can conclude that von Braun and his comrades were pawns in the cunning game that Himmler played against the generals of the Wehrmacht, and he, of course, was interested in protecting von Braun and his people and using them on occasion. once.

Von Braun's strong ties with the German army and with his boss and teacher Walter Dornberger were severed after an action carried out by Wehrmacht Lieutenant Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg. This German officer served in Tunisia, and there his car ran over a mine. Stauffenberg lost his left eye, right hand and two fingers on his left hand. After being discharged from the hospital, he was appointed chief of staff to General Friedrich Fromm, commander of the reserve army. Count von Staufenberg had long been disillusioned with the policies of the Nazis and believed that Hitler was to blame for all the failures of the Wehrmacht. By virtue of his position, he regularly appeared at the headquarters of the Fuhrer "Wolf's Lair", where he reported on the replenishment of the armies that fought on the eastern front. On July 20, 1944, von Stauffenberg entered the hall where Hitler was holding a meeting. Soon the lieutenant colonel apologized and left, leaving his leather briefcase on the floor near the table. A few seconds later there was a huge explosion. As a result, one of the meeting participants died, and several were seriously injured, three more died from their wounds already in the hospital. Adolf Hitler - the main target of the assassination - escaped with burns, several shallow wounds and bruises. In addition, the Fuhrer's membranes burst and his right hand was temporarily paralyzed.

Stauffenberg's accomplices in Berlin, also Wehrmacht officers, could have tried to seize power, but at the decisive moment they lost their nerve. By the end of that day, SS officers had arrested all the conspirators, including Stauffenberg, and executed them in the prison courtyard.

Stauffenberg's chief, General Fromm, swore that he knew nothing about the impending assassination attempt, but no one believed him, and he was also arrested. Hitler assigned Heinrich Himmler to carry out Fromm's duties. As a result, the Reichsführer SS headed the reserve army and the armaments department, and with this department the rocket weapons development program, which was led by Walter Dornberger and Wernher von Braun.

Before Himmler had time to deal with his new duties, the Wehrmacht set out to snatch a tasty morsel. To this end, army officials decided to take over the military enterprises on Peenemünde, since they were not the property of the army, but belonged to the state. On August 1, 1944, the Peenemünde factories were renamed the Electromechanische Werke (EKW) company. Major General Walter Dornberger felt he was losing control of the missile development program to which he had given 12 years of his life. So he became for a time the head of an industrial company. Dornberger was a reasonable man and understood that he alone could not cope. He needed reliable people who would know a lot about technology, management and production. Soon one of the most famous employees of the EKW, Wernher von Braun, became the de facto head of all work related to the creation of rockets.

Himmler failed to subordinate the factories and research laboratories of Peenemünde to his department, but the Mittelwerk plant, which produced V-2 rockets, remained under his command.

In early September 1944, Himmler managed to remove the Wehrmacht generals from the leadership of the V-2 missile tests, appointing his deputy SS Lieutenant General Hans Kammler as the main director of this action. This general was completely unsuitable for this role, since he was an architect by profession and became famous in the Third Reich for the design and construction of the buildings of the Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz) concentration camp. Kammler not only built. It was he who developed the project, according to which the Warsaw ghetto was razed to the ground after the uprising of its inhabitants. Hans Kammler supervised the construction of the Mittelwerk underground plant, which produced V-2 rockets. So, in September 1944, Kammler led the first successful rocket launch towards London. A little later, the firepower of the A-4 missiles fell not only on England, but also on other countries of Western Europe.

The day after the shelling of London, one of the central newspapers of the Reich came out with the following headline on the front page: "Weapon of Retribution-2 in action against London." At the suggestion of the propaganda department of Paul Goebbels, from that day on, the A-4 rocket received a new name - V-2 (from the abbreviated German word vergelfungswaffe) or "V-2". It was under this name that this ballistic missile went down in history.

A few years later, when von Braun was already living in the United States, but had not yet received American citizenship, he spoke about his reaction to the use of the V-2 rocket. “The newcomers to Peenemünde could not understand our dissatisfaction and pessimism. After a whole series of Wehrmacht defeats, they exclaimed: “You should be happy and proud of your V-2 brainchild.” It is the only weapon that our adversaries cannot stop. This is success. Rockets hit London every day."

“This is a success,” we said, but not so enthusiastically and added very quietly: “But we are shelling our own planet.”

Wernher von Braun continued to lead the design department at Peenemünde, and one day the day came to test a new rocket - the A-9. This rocket, in order to give it significance, no less than the A-4 rocket, was later called the A-4b. The new rocket had the same body as the A-4, but a larger span of stabilizers on the tail. These stabilizers were supposed to allow the rocket to approach the target not from above, but moving horizontally above the Earth's surface. The new device had twice the range and a flight time of 17 minutes. On January 24, 1945, the A-9 (A-4b) rocket, launched from Peenemünde, gained a speed of 4320 km / h. And although she did not manage to land safely, it was in fact the first, albeit unmanned, supersonic aircraft.

The next step in rocket science was to be the A-10 rocket. As conceived by von Braun, it was supposed to be a launch vehicle for the A-9 rocket. After reaching a speed of 4320 km / h, the A-9 was supposed to separate from the A-10 and, continuing the flight on its own, reach a speed of 10,080 km / h, and then return and land softly. In 40 minutes of flight, a two-stage A-9 / A-10 rocket could carry 454 kg of cargo over a distance of 4000 km, equal to the distance from Northern Europe to New York. However, the A-10 rocket remained only on the drawings, and its production never began.

In von Braun's head, designs for more powerful rockets, the A-11 and A-12, were already being born, which could deliver the A-9 and even the thirty-ton A-10 into low Earth orbit. But in the winter of 1944–45, all of Germany was already in ruins, and these new designs remained dreams. Moreover, A-4 missiles could also be destroyed, and along with those who created them.

By the end of January 1945, the rumble of cannonade from the shots of Soviet guns, located 80 km from the cape, was clearly audible on Peenemünde. Everyone who worked at the missile base already knew that this territory would soon fall to the enemy. Wernher von Braun urgently called a confidential meeting, to which he invited only a few of his deputies, those whom he trusted as himself. He was going to solve one single question - what to do in connection with the approach of the enemy? The opinion of those present was unanimous. Von Braun and his men would not wait for the Soviet troops to capture Peenemünde, but should go to the south of Germany and offer their experience and knowledge to the Americans. Why Americans? Yes, because the United States was the only country of the coalition powers that had enough funds and the desire to continue work on the creation of missiles. The decision to surrender to the Americans, von Braun and other participants in this secret meeting, of course, kept a secret, since such a decision was an open betrayal of the Third Reich.

On the last day of January, von Braun gathered the heads of sectors and departments, as well as his deputies, in his office and announced that he had just received an order from SS Lieutenant General Hans Kammler for the urgent evacuation of personnel and equipment used in the most important projects to south of Germany. Von Braun emphasized that this is an order from above, and not just a proposal. He later admitted that there were several orders from various departments, and they contradicted each other. Von Braun chose the one that best suited his plans.

He and all his subordinates prepared surprisingly quickly for the departure from Peenemünde. Three thousand people, unique equipment and tons of documentation - drawings, test results and other priceless documents - moved to the south of the country by rail, trucks and even barges. By the beginning of March 1945, the evacuation from Peenemünde was practically complete. Von Braun settled in the town of Bleicherode, and Walter Dornberger, who assisted in the evacuation, chose the town of Bad Sachsa in the center of Germany for his office. Both of these towns were quite close to the Mittelwerk underground plant, where the first V-2 rockets were assembled a year ago.

Von Braun did not have the opportunity to continue his developments, just as Nazi Germany did not have the opportunity to escape defeat. Now the main task of von Braun was to save his team.

One night in mid-March, von Braun traveled by car to Berlin for a meeting at the Ministry of Armaments. He hoped to solicit funds for the construction of a new research center. The chances of getting any money from the government were slim. Von Braun's only trump card was that he managed to keep a team of high-class professionals. However, he did not reach Berlin. His driver dozed off at the wheel, and the car fell into a ditch. Miraculously surviving von Braun crawled out from under the wreckage of the car. His left arm was broken in two places, and severe pain pierced his shoulder. For the next few months, he walked around with his hand in a cast and was on the verge of physical and nervous exhaustion, making desperate attempts to maintain the integrity of his team.

Speaking about this period later to American reporters, von Braun remarked: “We then found ourselves at the mercy of a local tyrant who was the most cruel of all the people I had ever met. It was one of the SS generals named Kammler.

These words of von Braun sounded more than strange to those who knew that he had worked side by side with Kammler for a year and a half and knew the character of this man very well. Kammler, on duty, supervised the testing of the V-1 cruise missiles and Von Braun's favorite brainchild, the V-2 ballistic missile. And it was Kammler's order to move south that von Braun preferred to use as a guide to action.

By the beginning of April 1945, American tanks were already 19 km from Bleicherode, and American troops were trying to capture the entire territory around the Mittelwerk. Kammler ordered von Braun to gather 400 of the most talented scientists and engineers and go even further south - to the town of Oberammergau, at the foot of the Bavarian Alps. Walter Dornberger and his small group received the same order. What prompted Kammler to issue these orders is difficult to say. It might seem that in the depths of his soul he still hoped that in the impregnable Alpine redoubts he would be able to continue the war with the Americans. But, most likely, Kammler was already thinking about negotiating with the Americans and selling them German rocket technology and specialists in exchange for his life. Von Braun had a similar plan. It is not known whether he knew about Kammler's secret plans, but he had to obey the order anyway, since he had the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer.

On April 11, General Kammler invited Wernher von Braun to his place and announced that he was forced to leave Oberammergau on duty, and von Braun and his people would remain under the protection of the general's deputies. The next day, Kammler really disappeared, and apart from a short message sent by him to Himmler's office, no one else heard anything about him. This man is gone forever.

In the days that followed, von Braun's men dispersed into the villages surrounding Oberammergau. They continued to think about how to improve the missiles they created, and waited for the demise of the Third Reich. On the slopes of the Alps, they felt relatively safe. There were no air raids and no SS men with their interrogations and purges. Von Braun was finally able to get serious about treating his wounded shoulder and broken arm.

On May 1, 1945, the German radio announced the startling news. Fuhrer Adolf Hitler died heroically during a battle with the enemy at his headquarters in Berlin. The next day, von Braun and six members of his team, including younger brother Magnus von Braun and teacher Walter Dornberger, crossed the Alps into Austria, where they surrendered to the Americans.

In the early days, von Braun and the rest of the prisoners thought hard about what they should say to the Americans. The seven members of von Braun's team who had surrendered, along with von Braun himself, were held by the Americans under arrest in Garmisch. The captured rocket men told only what they were allowed to tell von Braun, General Dornberger and Dornberger's chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Axter. They didn't have to lay everything out, because after that they would be sent back to destroyed Germany. They wanted to bargain so that the deal would be very profitable for them. This reticence was noticed by United States intelligence officers and made them dislike the interrogators. Under the leadership of Colonel Holger Toftoy, American soldiers began to assemble parts of the V-2 rocket at Mittelwerk. From the selected parts it was possible to assemble a hundred ballistic missiles. In addition, the Americans found 14 tons of documentation, which von Braun once ordered to be hidden in a safe place. And, finally, the people who created these missiles got to the Americans. With missile parts, documentation, and German scientists and engineers, the United States could begin its own missile program.

Wernher von Braun remembered these exciting days for the rest of his life: “American intelligence officers interrogated me for several weeks. Finally, Colonel Holger Toftoy asked me the most frank question: "Do you think you can become a citizen of the United States?"

“I said I would try,” von Braun recalled many years later.

Richard Porter, who investigated von Braun's past after the war, was asked many years later who had the idea to bring von Braun and his people to the United States, and he replied that it was most likely von Braun's own idea.

Strange, but for some reason Wernher von Braun was little bothered by questions like:

Why did you betray your country so quickly after the war?

Did you use the Nazis to get your way, or were you actually a committed Nazi?

Did you know about the concentration camps and what happened in them?

Why were you and your people able to move to the United States so quickly, when the survivors of the concentration camps have been waiting for this moment for years?

All these questions can be combined into one global. What did Wernher von Braun keep silent about in his authorized biography and in the articles in which he spoke about his life?

Notes:

Landrat is a local government body in Germany. - Note. ed.

Wernher von Braun was born in the town of Wirsitz in the province of Posen in what was then the German Empire. His family belonged to an aristocratic family, he inherited the title "Freiherr" (corresponds to the baronial). After the First World War, Wirsitz was transferred to Poland, and the Werner family, like many other German families, emigrated to Germany. The von Brauns settled in Berlin. In 1930, von Braun entered the Technical University of Berlin, where he joined the "Verein für Raumschiffahrt" ("Space Travel Society") group. In 1930 he began working on liquid fuel rockets. In 1932 he was admitted to the Dornberger military rocket science group.

Von Braun was working on his dissertation when Hitler and the NSDAP came to power in 1933. Rocketry almost immediately became an important issue on the agenda. In July 1934, von Braun was awarded the degree of Doctor of Physical Sciences (rocket science).

The new Nazi regime banned civilian rocket science experiments. Rockets were only allowed to be built by the military. To this end, a huge rocket research center was built in the village of Peenemünde in northern Germany, on the Baltic Sea, with Dornberger as military leader. Since 1937, Wernher von Braun has been the technical director of the Peenemünde center and the chief designer of the A-4 (V-2) rocket, which was used in World War II to bombard the cities of France, Great Britain, Holland and Belgium.

"V-2", (V-2 - Vergeltungswaffe-2, retaliation weapon, another name: A-4 - Aggregat-4) is a single-stage liquid-fueled ballistic missile. It was launched vertically, on the active part of the trajectory, an autonomous gyroscopic control system came into action, equipped with a software mechanism and instruments for measuring speed. The flight range reached 320 km, the height of the trajectory - 100 km. The warhead contained up to 800 kg of ammotol. One of the most revolutionary technological solutions used on the V-2 was the automatic guidance system, which did not require constant adjustment from the ground, the target coordinates were entered into the onboard analog computer before launch. The gyroscopes mounted on the rocket controlled its spatial position throughout the entire flight, and any deviation from the given trajectory was corrected by the rudders on the side stabilizers.

By the end of January 1945, the rumble of cannonade from the shots of Soviet guns was clearly audible on Peenemünde. All those who worked at the missile base realized that this territory would soon fall to the enemy. Wernher von Braun gathered his development team and asked them to decide how and to whom they should all surrender. The opinion of those present was unanimous. Von Braun and his men would not wait for the Soviet troops to capture Peenemünde, but should go to the south of Germany and offer their experience and knowledge to the Americans.

On the last day of January, von Braun gathered the heads of sectors and departments, as well as his deputies, in his office and announced that he had just received an order from SS Lieutenant General Hans Kammler for the urgent evacuation of personnel and equipment used in the most important projects to south of Germany. Von Braun emphasized that this is an order from above, and not just a proposal. He later admitted that there were several orders from various departments, and they contradicted each other. Von Braun chose the one that best suited his plans.

Preparations have begun for shipment to the south of the country. Unique equipment and tons of documentation were collected. By the beginning of March 1945, the evacuation from Peenemünde was practically complete.

2 Bleicherode

Von Braun settled in the town of Bleicherode, and Walter Dornberger, who assisted in the evacuation, chose the town of Bad Sachsa in the center of Germany. Both of these cities were quite close to the Mittelwerk underground plant, where the first V-2 rockets were assembled a year ago.

By the beginning of April 1945, American tanks were already 19 km from Bleicherode, and American troops were trying to capture the entire territory around the Mittelwerk. Kammler ordered von Braun to gather 400 of the most talented scientists and engineers and go even further south to the town of Oberammergau, at the foot of the Bavarian Alps. Walter Dornberger and his small group received the same order.

3 Oberammergau

On April 11, General Kammler invited Wernher von Braun to his place and announced that he was forced to leave Oberammergau on duty, and von Braun and his people would remain under the protection of the general's deputies. The next day, Kammler really disappeared, and apart from a short message sent by him to Himmler's office, no one else heard anything about him.

In the days that followed, von Braun's men dispersed into the villages surrounding Oberammergau. On the slopes of the Alps, they felt relatively safe.

On May 1, 1945, German radio announced the death of Fuhrer Adolf Hitler. The next day, von Braun and six members of his team, including younger brother Magnus von Braun and teacher Walter Dornberger, surrendered to the Americans.

After his capture, Brown told the press: “We know that we have created a new means of warfare and now the moral choice - which nation, which victorious people we want to entrust our brainchild - is before us sharper than ever before. We want the world not to be caught up in a conflict like the one Germany just went through. We believe that only by handing over such weapons to those people who are guided by the Bible, we can be sure that the world is protected in the best possible way.

4 Garmisch-Partenkirchen

The Americans kept von Braun and his team under arrest in the quiet resort town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the foothills of the Alps. The highest ranks of the US command were well aware of how valuable booty fell into their hands: the name of von Braun headed the "Black List" - the code name for the list of German scientists and engineers from among those whom American military experts would like to interrogate as soon as possible. Based on the results of intensive interrogations, measures were immediately taken, special search teams were hastily sent to different parts of Germany to seize documentation, materials and search for people.

On July 19, 1945, two days before the planned transfer of the territory to the zone of Soviet occupation, US Army Major Robert B. Staver, Chief of the Jet Propulsion Department of the US Army Ordnance Research and Intelligence Service in London and Lieutenant Colonel R. L. Williams, planted von Braun and heads of his departments in a jeep and taken from Garmisch to Munich. Then the group was transported by air to Nordhausen, and the next day - 60 km southwest, to the town of Witzenhausen, located in the American zone of occupation. Von Braun briefly lingered at the Dustbin interrogation center, where representatives of the Third Reich's elite in the field of economics, science and technology were interrogated by British and American intelligence services.

On June 20, 1945, the US Secretary of State approved the relocation of von Braun and his staff to America. Brown was among those scientists for whom the United States Intelligence Agency created fictitious biographies and removed references to NSDAP membership and links to the Nazi regime from open records. By "cleansing" them from Nazism, the American government thus gave scientists security guarantees for working in the United States.

5 Fort Bliss, USA

The first seven specialists, including Wernher von Braun, arrived in the United States at a military airfield in Newcastle, Delaware, on September 20, 1945. They then flew to Boston and were taken by boat to the US Army Intelligence Agency's base at Fort Strong in Boston Harbor. Then everyone except Brown arrived at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to sort out the documents taken from Peenemünde. These documents were supposed to allow scientists to continue experimenting with rockets.

Von Braun eventually arrived at Fort Bliss, Texas, a major US military base north of El Paso. Since the Americans had no experience in the development of large rockets, and especially such as the V-2, they asked von Braun for the names of those people who would help in the shortest possible time to establish the production of combat missiles for the United States army. It was easy for von Braun to do this. He knew perfectly well which of his people were loyal to him and highly qualified. In total, he named 118 names.

Until 1950, Wernher von Braun worked at Fort Bliss, and then at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. In 1956, he was appointed head of the Redstone intercontinental ballistic missile (as well as rockets based on it - Jupiter-S and Juno) and the Explorer series satellite. Since 1960, von Braun has been a member of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and director of the NASA Space Flight Center. Head of development of launch vehicles of the Saturn series and spacecraft of the Apollo series. Since 1970, he has been Deputy Director of NASA for planning manned space flights, since 1972 he worked in industry as vice president of Fairchild Space Industries in Germantown, Maryland. After leaving NASA in 1972, he lived only five years and died of pancreatic cancer.